PALGRAVE STUDIES IN

RELATIONAL SOCIOLOGY

SOCIAL TIES IN
ONLINE NETWORKING

GRETI-IULIA IVANA
Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology

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 Greti-Iulia Ivana

Social Ties in Online

Networking
Greti-Iulia Ivana
Department of Sociology
Uppsala University
Uppsala, Sweden

Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology

ISBN 978-3-319-71594-0    ISBN 978-3-319-71595-7 (eBook)
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For my mother, Felicia
 Acknowledgments

This book discusses social networking activity and its significance in the
context of users’ reciprocal bonds. The bulk of the analysis is based on
interviews with Facebookers about what they do, what they like and
watch, but first and foremost how they intend their own actions and read
into each other’s within the realm of social media. I have had an interest
in human communication, and in everyday life interpretative processes
long before realizing it, and before being a sociologist. However, it was
during my years as a graduate student when, reading Alfred Schütz, I
became fully aware of it. Since then, my standpoint and my focus have
shifted repeatedly. Nevertheless, my approach is still greatly indebted to
Schütz, particularly for his systematic analyses of taken for grantedness
and relevance and for his views on first-hand lived experience. Many
other authors writing in a phenomenological vein have also served as
guidance in writing this book (Merleau-Ponty stands out). Yet, the rela-
tional angle I adopt is also strongly influenced by Simmel and several
symbolic interactionists, particularly Goffman and Hochschild.
As insightful as these sources have been for me as a sociologist and for
my efforts of theorizing social reality, this book would have not been pos-
sible without the cooperation of my informants. For reasons of confiden-
tiality, they cannot be named, but I do wish to thank all of them for their
openness and honesty in sharing with me private aspects of their lives.
Their stories and experiences are the backbone of this work.
vii
viii  Acknowledgments

Having said this, the greater part of the research on which this book is
based was conducted through the generous funding offered by Universitat
Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). For the grant without which none of this
would have not been written, I wish to thank the UOC.  Especially, I
would like to thank Josep Llados, at the time the director of the Internet
Interdisciplinary Institute in Barcelona, and David Megias, the current
director, for their fairness and professionalism, which has meant so much
for me. I also thank Natalia Canto Mila and Swen Seebach for their over-
all support and encouragement.
This book is the result of a personal project, but one which has bene-
fited from great discussions and advice. In this regard, I would also like to
thank the members of GRECS, the Group of Study for Culture and
Society, especially Roger Martinez and Isaac Gonzalez, for listening to my
thoughts along the way and for their valuable input. I wish to thank
Martin Berg, who, despite the geographical distance, has taken the time
to read my work and whose practical and well-structured ideas have been
instrumental in furthering this project. Special thanks to Mary Holmes,
from whom I received thoughtful and detailed comments which have
brought me a new and rounder understanding of the topic of this research.
I would also like to thank Calin Goina for his suggestions and Jochen
Dreher for the opportunity to develop my theoretical framework with a
stay at the Social Science Archive, at the University of Konstanz.
I would like to thank Patrik Aspers, whose generous advice has helped
me navigate the process of writing this book and has eased the adaptation
to my new academic home at Uppsala University. For comments on the
Introduction, I wish to thank Alexander Dobeson, Dominik Döllinger,
Peter Bengtsson, Alison Gerber, and the other members of UU’s Economic
Sociology Lab. For comments on the Overviewing chapter, I thank Tora
Holmberg, Fredrik Palm, and the Cultural Matters Group at Uppsala
University. I am indebted to François Dépelteau, editor of the Relational
Sociology Series, and to the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.
At the same time, I wish to thank Palgrave editors Sharla Plant and Jack
Redden for their work with the manuscript.
I am grateful to Aleksandra Wilczinska, Aleksandra Skorupinska,
Maria Luisa Malerba, and Monika Kustra for the kindness and personal
encouragement they offered me during the most demanding stages of
  Acknowledgments 
   ix

this project. I thank Vlad Ceregan for his unwavering support and for the
patience and warmth with which he surrounds me. Finally, my mother is
the person who has been with me through every day of fieldwork and
writing, through each reason of worry, each new idea, and each moment
of joy. Her energy, dedication, and love continue to overwhelm me. I
dedicate this book to her.

Greti-Iulia Ivana
14.08.2017, Uppsala
 Contents

1 
Introduction   1

2 It Happened on Facebook   27

3 Facebook and Real Life   45

4 Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like

Catching Up, But Without Talking”   73

5 Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions  111

6 Social Networking and Emotions  141

7 The Structural Underpinnings of Online Bonds  173

8 Conclusions  197

xi
xii  Contents

R
 eferences 205

Index 223
 1
Introduction

“Any gesture—a cool greeting, an appreciative laugh, the apology for an

outburst—is measured against a prior sense of what is reasonably owed
another, given the sort of bond involved.”
(Hochschild 1979, p. 568)

In 1939, Norbert Elias was writing, in a Simmelian fashion, about society

understood as a web of relations. We are all born and raised within a
group of people, we are shaped as unique individuals through our links
with those around us, and we go through life weaving our purposes,
wishes, and dreams in the fabric of an ever-changing, but always present
relational universe. To make his stance easier to grasp, Elias invites us to
imagine something as simple as a conversation between two people and
to analyze the replies of one of them “as a separate unity existing with its
own order independently of the network-figure of the conversation: that
would be much as if one were to consider a person’s individuality as
something independent of the relations in which he finds himself, the
constant weaving of threads through which he has become what he is”
(Elias 2001, p. 25).

© The Author(s) 2018 1

G.-I. Ivana, Social Ties in Online Networking, Palgrave Studies in
Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71595-7_1
2  G.-I. Ivana

Around 70 years later, I, like most of the people I knew, decided to join
Facebook and I immediately felt the first-hand experience of the imagi-
nary scenario about which Elias talked. Every post seemed a piece of a
conversation I did not know, which, in turn, was part of a relation I did
not know about. Everyone seemed to be saying something to someone
else and the conversation partner(s) remained undisclosed more often
than not. The only posts I fully understood were my own and, sometimes,
those of my close friends, but for most of the time, I was missing the con-
text behind people’s posts. The very assumption of an existing background
to which the content belonged was very intriguing. I had not reflected on
the relational core of that background, but there was an unshakable intu-
ition about there being something more to what was displayed in public
posts. It encouraged me to speculate about the larger situations, relations,
conversations which generated the published image or text and it brought
me in front of various puzzles, of which very few pieces were ever given.
At the same time, these contents were labeled as “public”, a term I found
somewhat misleading. Publicness, in my understanding, involved an
audience regarded as a whole. On Facebook, though, each and every
member of one’s audience had a specific relation with the owner of the
profile and that added to my feeling of fragmentation.
In 2010, I started chatting to people who were using Facebook about
what it meant to them, how they employed it, and how they read it. And
despite receiving very diverse answers, all of them had something in com-
mon, namely, the reference to their own social bonds. A 25-year-old smiled
and told me, “it’s a waste of time, but I like it because it’s like reading a
glossy magazine about people you actually know”. Several years later, some-
one said with mild frustration he joined “because everyone is there”. In
between these answers, I heard stories about romantic interests, work con-
flicts, old rivalries, political mobilization, and home party planning. Social
bonds, and often somewhat consolidated ones, appeared to be the main
underlying thread which gave coherence to this wide array of narratives.
Looking back into Norbert Elias’ and others’ work on the importance
of social relations, my claim is that it provides crucial tools for under-
standing developments in social networking sites, despite the different
setting specific to digital media. According to Elias, “The historicity of
each individual, the phenomenon of growing up to adulthood, is the key
  Introduction    3

to an understanding of what “society” is” (Elias 2001, p. 25). He goes on

to elaborate on how the abovementioned individual historicity is con-
structed through bonds and how sociality constitutes the main precondi-
tion for the formation of individuality and unicity themselves. By
pursuing this logic, Elias highlights the intrinsic interdependence rather
than opposition between individual and society.
Of course, his words refer to the formation of individuals in groups
that are in some ways traditional, in which people are copresent and have
direct contributions on each other’s lives. The online world, on the other
hand, is something many associate with solitude and with disengagement
from social life. It is argued people spend more and more time with their
phones and laptops than with each other. Yet, in the case of social net-
working, and to a lesser extent in gaming, the time spent with one’s
phone is, from a certain perspective, time invested in the relation with
the other (although not necessarily in the form of time “spent with the
other”, as I will show later on). Moreover, the typical Facebook practice
of maintaining links with people with whom one was in contact at cer-
tain stages in one’s life evokes and contributes to shaping the very rela-
tional historicity of each individual, on which Elias was insisting.

Research Approach
Despite the growing volume of research on social networking, the ways
in which Facebooking practices are connected with social bonds between
users are still unclear. This situation is paradoxical, as social ties are one of
the main points of focus for scholars working with Facebook and new
media more broadly. However, this preoccupation translates into a sig-
nificant amount of work on ties and Facebook from a behavioral quanti-
fiable large-scale perspective, and a lack of research of Facebook and ties
from an in-depth subjective, phenomenological standpoint (Lambert
2016). For instance, important findings show that that intensity of
Facebook use strongly predicts the number and quality of weak ties in a
longitudinal analysis (Steinfield et al. 2008). On a similar note, Donath
and Boyd (2004), Ellison et  al. (2007), Resnick (2001), and Wellman
et  al. 2001 point out social networking supports loose social ties and
4  G.-I. Ivana

helps users create and maintain relationships they constructed for access-
ing resources. As far as stronger bonds are concerned, Johnston et  al.
(2013) did not find a significant relationship between Facebook use and
their development. However, Kwon et al. (2013) highlight a gap within
this literature. Namely, they ask, “does Facebook have the same social
effect on an individual who spends an hour a day composing messages
and commenting and on an individual who spends an hour a day simply
surfing pictures of parties that they were not at?” (Kwon et  al. 2013,
p.  35). They answer following a similar behaviorist approach. All this
research highlights broad trends about Facebook users and their ties,
showing correlations which are worth exploring. At the same time, in
order to gain insight into the processes of tie construction, negotiation,
or maintenance on Facebook, this work must be complemented with a
qualitative approach. Kwon et  al.’s question about what exactly that
someone does on Facebook has an effect on ties highlights precisely that
need to understand the mechanisms which lead to particular links
between Facebook use and tie strength or social capital formation. The
apparently simple question of how Facebook actually works in the con-
text of social ties has been overlooked.
One reason for this is the isolated nature of Facebook within social
life. There is a directly experienced limit between what happens on
Facebook and what happens outside of it. So, Facebook is in this sense a
predefined research field. This experiential online/offline, log in/log out
switch draws attention away from the existing, underlying social bonds,
which act as a background for online (inter)actions. An interesting
exception can be found in discussions about dead users, where bonds are
a major component (Kasket 2012; Irwin 2015). Yet, most advancements
have been made in other directions. For example, Facebook scholars
insist on how social network users present themselves in conformity to
social expectations (Birnbaum 2008; Strano and Wattai Queen 2012;
Farquhar 2013). It is often suggested people lose their genuine connec-
tions with others in an effort to display certain characteristics (Hogan
2010; Walther et al. 2008). The isolating process of self-exposure is dou-
bled by an altered experience of togetherness and a lack of reciprocally
oriented ­communication (Turkle 2011; van Dijck 2013; Hilsen and
Helvik 2014). Although different on many levels, the perspective based
  Introduction    5

on roles and normativity is equally individualizing. The user is part of a

social system, which encourages, favors, rewards a series of behaviors,
and sanctions others (McLaughlin and Vitak 2011; Tufekci 2008). The
political impact of Facebook campaigns and mobilizations (Auter and
Fine 2017; Beyer 2014; Vaccari 2017; Alduiza et  al. 2014), the links
between Facebook and particular consumer behaviors (Duffett 2015;
Dehghani and Turner 2015; Heyman and Pierson 2013), and the con-
struction of an identity with profound structural roots (Aguirre and
Davies 2015; Micalizzi 2014; Kebadayi and Price 2014) have all been
thoroughly discussed and documented.
Nevertheless, it is the links between each other that users emphasize
most. Facebookers love to talk about stalking romantic interests; being
judgmental of old colleagues; gossiping with good friends; getting closer
to popular, powerful, and successful others; and assuming personal prob-
lems their boss might be facing. Thus, the purpose of this book is
twofold:

• It explores the ways in which the exchanges of information unfolding

on Facebook impact the universe of the users’ social bonds;
• It looks into how the underlying fabric of social relations influences
the dynamic of Facebook contents.

Speaking of Facebook’s broad social background, there is no doubt

about the fact that Facebook networks of friends typically consist of those
with whom one has at least been acquainted. It is Facebook etiquette to
have a recognizable name and/or profile picture and not to invite
unknown people in one’s network. In a conversation about her early
experiences of social networking, a young girl explained to me, amused,
about her move, as a teenager, from Hi5 to Facebook. This was a different
environment, she would observe, and, if on Hi5 connecting with strang-
ers was standard practice, it was “lame” to do the same on Facebook.
Another user was bothered by a friend request he received from someone
with a common first name followed by an initial (e.g. John W.), who also
happened to have a cat as a profile picture. John W. never made it in my
interviewee’s network. Thus, besides the manner in which interactions
unfold on Facebook, they are part of a larger relational narrative, to which
6  G.-I. Ivana

they contribute and by which they are shaped, as we will explore, in more
ways than by simple acceptance or exclusion. This being said, this book
sets out to advance current debates on interpersonal relations in condi-
tions of non-copresence, offering a relational alternative to the self and
identity-oriented approaches to social networking.

Methodology
In describing the offline and online side of social relations which unfold
partially through Facebook, and showing how the two levels of experience
converge in meaning making, I have drawn on empirical research I con-
ducted between 2010 and 2014. This work consisted in observation of
Facebook profiles and public exchanges of information but, most impor-
tantly, 40 open-ended interviews with users about their practices and their
understanding of social networking and of Facebook in particular. The
interviews were conducted face to face, initially in the Romanian city of
Cluj-Napoca and, after 2012, in Barcelona. The users were aged between
18 and 39; they were of various nationalities and the majority of them (36
out of 40) were either highly educated or enrolled in tertiary education at
the time of the interviews. The respondents were 22 women and 18 men.
The interviews were conducted in Romanian, English, and Spanish.
Illustrations for the ideas found in the book come from both partici-
pant observation and interviews with a wide scope. Namely, I began with
an interest in what makes Facebook a different and successful means of
communicating information in the eyes of its users. Stemming from this
interrogation was the issue of what users made of their online presence in
this environment, how they decided to post certain contents, and what
they read into what they received from others. For instance, users were
invited to talk about several things that they posted on their wall and
about how they decided to share that content with their contacts. The
ways in which received content was interpreted were also an important
point in the interviews. Respondents were asked about identity and
­privacy, topics which are typically associated with social networking sites.
Whenever they made general statements, inquiries were made into how
the respondents reached those conclusions and they were asked about
  Introduction    7

examples of concrete experiences they have had. The result was a set of
rich set of data, consisting of the subjects’ own attitudes, doubts, enchant-
ment with Facebook, as well as great examples of information exchanges
online and how these exchanges were lived and understood “behind the
scenes”, or backstage, to use Goffman’s famous dramaturgical metaphor.
Given the volume of the data and the variety of approaches users had
when talking about what they do on Facebook, why and how they do it,
delimiting the most relevant categories and finding the communalities
and tensions in practices, interpretations, and motivations has proven
itself to be a challenging task. However, the relational thread emerged
from the data as the unanimous focus of all practices linked to or unfold-
ing on Facebook. The respondents often talked about life trajectories and
old contacts, about how Facebook users seek to increase their social status
in each other’s eyes, about physical and relational distance, and about the
process through which they decided to post or to give feedback to another
(a process which was unexpectedly laborious for many users).
At the same time, as is often the case in any small-scale analysis of
social life, emotions were an important part of the respondents’ discourse.
More precisely, pride and embarrassment (the emotions which are most
rooted in the gaze of the other) were frequently mentioned. Additionally,
displays of economic and educational capital, through vacations, “check
ins”, graduations, and working space, are only several indicators of social
class which were part of both observation and interviews. Yet, the inter-
views offered extra layers of understanding, especially through the con-
stant references to the relational logic behind these elements. For instance,
users would wonder about things such as: what are they hoping to achieve
by flooding my newsfeed with their photos? Would my friends find it in
poor taste if I share this story from my trip? The interpersonal links were
always the foundation of meaning making.

Social Relations: An Overview

Insight into the networks of ties which support Facebooking practices
can help clarify the relevance of social networking through the eyes of its
users; it can reveal the sociological significance of how (inter)acting in
8  G.-I. Ivana

this given setting is experienced and how that experience becomes mean-
ingful in a larger relational picture. The approach I am adopting is largely
distinct from the formalist methodologically oriented social networks
analysis (Smith-Doerr and Powell 2005; Azarian 2010). Rather, my aim
is to analyze ties outside of the form/content dichotomy, through the
unfolding of everyday life situations and through subjects’ experiences of
those situations, with patterns and regularities emerging as elements of
approximate and imperfect structuration.
Yet, when talking about concrete empirical situations, it is important
to keep in mind that the exchanges of information taking place on
Facebook (or elsewhere) are a recurrent element of social bonds, but
they do not represent the bond as a whole. Besides these exchanges
(which are sometimes direct interactions and other times a form of indi-
rect news report), there are offline interactions which either occur alter-
natively with the online ones or have occurred in the past and constitute
the basis of the bond. Additionally to these concrete events, the bond
also includes expectations about the other in light of what is already
known about them (Wolfe 1970; Weber 1978; Azarian 2010), memo-
ries about shared past experiences, projections about future encounters,
emotional investment, struggles for power and control (Simmel 1950;
Granovetter 1983; White 2008) as well as an understanding of the type
of informal tie which binds the users and which regulates their interac-
tions (Simmel 2009; Collins 2004; Weber 1978). The bond is neither of
the online nor of the offline. It is a relatively stable frame which sums up
past knowledge, shared experience, affectivity, common plans, and
expectations describing the general connection between two or more
people. Thus, the bond involves a mixture of reflective and emotional
aspects which (1) characterize the link with the other in their absence
and which (2) shape the interaction with them when it takes place. If
social interactions or simple non-interactional exchanges always include
a message and an act of c­ ommunication, bonds are not fully graspable at
the level of behavior. They have indicators and exterior manifestations,
but they are also part of the wider subjectivity of the bonded individu-
als. It is through the stocks of impressions1 of the subjects about each
other, as well as in their understanding of general social norms and
  Introduction    9

expectations, that bonds gain stability and transcend the episodic inter-
connectedness from which they take shape.
The level of bond durability is not simply a given dimension to a par-
ticular exchange of information occurring through Facebook. It also con-
stitutes the context in which that exchange is experienced first hand (if it
is a direct interaction), as well as how the exchange becomes meaningful
for the subjects involved in it (Argyle and Henderson 1984; Konecki
2008; Bryant and Marmo 2012). Here, meaning is understood as more
than a reflective attribution of sense; it is, broadly speaking, the equiva-
lent of value. It is also not attributed a posteriori, but constructed within
the exchange itself. For instance, when a Facebook user sees one of his
secrets exposed publicly by someone they had trusted, in a conversation
with a third person, the re-evaluation of the one who divulged the secret,
the deception, the embarrassment, the questions about his own under-
standing of friendship in general and of this friendship in particular will
be part of how he experiences that event as meaningful. In this sense, the
exchanges of information taking place on Facebook are inseparable from
the meaning of the bonds through which they are defined and in which
they find their importance.
The bonds which are behind Facebook exchanges are shaping users’
first-hand experience, their emotional reactions, and their retrospective
reflections with respect to any given occurrence (Keller and Fay 2012).
Furthermore, the relational meaning which is inherent to exchanges also
dictates their course. To continue the example above, the user whose
secret was divulged may write a public angry message to the one he feels
betrayed his trust. The interdependency (Tönnies 1957) in which various
exchanges are rooted is of great practical importance, as it guides evalua-
tions, but also reactions and the unfolding of concrete events.
At the same time, the episodic interactions and exchanges themselves
have an impact on bonds, which are relatively stable, but not entirely
fixed over time (Blumer 1969; Goffman 1971; White 2008). The user
whose secret was shared publicly will read that situation in light of a par-
ticular tie he shared with the other, in light of how he was taught friends
should behave, and in light of how he expects the other to feel or to
behave from his previous stock of impressions about that person. At the
same time, it is through this very exchange that the bond is re-evaluated
10  G.-I. Ivana

and the characteristics of the other are put under question. Despite their
durability, ties are still open to new interactions, to new experiences and
new understandings. To be sure, it is not frequent that ties are redefined
altogether, but, as we will see in the narratives of users, changes, negotia-
tions, and adaptations are made within ties as a result of episodic interac-
tion and exchanges of information, some of which happen to take place
on Facebook.
An important aspect of bonds is the fact that while they are experi-
enced and processed subjectively by each participant, they are at the same
time in between social actors. They concern types of bonds (like friend-
ship, romantic partnership, rivalry, etc.), roles and expectations derived
from these bonds, a certain relational normativity, all of which are per-
formed in nuanced ways by different individuals, but which are neverthe-
less marked by at least a roughly common social understanding. These
elements do not refer to either the subject or the other with whom one
establishes a bond, but to the actual bond, to that which is shared, how
and why it is shared, to the actions of one social actor in relation with
the other. Bond typologies are a common sociological preoccupation.
Azarian puts it in the following terms:

“sociological literature is replete with schemes for classifying social relationships,

varying greatly in complexity, sophistication and thoroughness. Ever since the
birth of the discipline the issue has occupied many sociologists, and still continues
to do so, although with much less intensity. To name only a few, Tönnies, Cooley,
Durkheim, Weber, von Wiese, Parsons, Rex, Collins and White are among those
who, although using different conceptual frameworks and terminologies, have
tried their hands at developing typologies of social ties.” (Azarian 2010, p. 330)

Bearing in mind this dual character of social bonds (simultaneously

subjective and relational, inter-subjective), a key classificatory criterion,
especially in the context of Facebook, is that of correspondence and,
implicitly, of reciprocity. By correspondence, I refer to the extent in which
people’s evaluation of the bond they share are similar, their expectations
about their own and each other’s behavior converge, their emotional
attachment to each other and to their rapport are compatible. It is this
correspondence between those involved in a bond that, together with an
orientation towards each other, results in reciprocity.
  Introduction    11

The correspondence (or lack thereof ) between how the bond is lived
and understood subjectively by its participants is reflected into all sorts of
interactions (Adloff and Mau 2006; Harrigan and Yap 2017; Huck and
Tyran 2007) including those occurring on Facebook. When a clear cor-
respondence is not established, the interactors have to adapt to each oth-
er’s framing of the interaction. However, one’s subjective construction of
a particular tie for him/herself is not necessarily intelligible to the other.
A typical example is the relation one interprets as friendship and the
other as potential romantic partnership. At the same time, professional
collaboration or subordination, different levels of trust, or different inter-
pretations of social roles are other cases where a lack of overlap between
people who are part of a common tie may occur. Face to face, topics of
conversation, gestures, rhythm and tone of voice are socially accepted
indicators of how one person feels about the bond with the other (Blumer
1969; Goffman 1959, 1967, 1971). Among other benefits, the interac-
tion serves for creating a similar understanding of the bond for those who
participate in it. On Facebook, the possibility of a user seeing a bond
differently than the one with whom they are bonded is increased. If a
common relational ground was not previously established offline,
Facebookers have talked to me about their confusion in finding compat-
ible interpretations of their bonds online. Consequently, questions about
appropriateness and answers found in the habitualization of specific
acceptable behaviors have come up in the interviews. For instance, a
young Catalan man shared a story about having read on Facebook a girl
he knew had moved to a different country. However, he felt it would not
have been right for him to congratulate her on this change, because even
though the information was public, it would have been too forward of
him to write a comment since they had not met in a long time. This is a
topic I will analyze at length, in the following chapters, as potential dif-
ferences in how social actors regard and experience a bond play a major
part in allowing us to gain insight into Facebook exchanges, and how and
why they occur.
The discussion about stable bonds and their relations with Facebook
information circulation has many facets. Yet, beside the level of corre-
spondence between those bonded, relational distance is the other main
aspect that needs to be addressed from the beginning.
12  G.-I. Ivana

Distance is perhaps the most talked about topic with respect to social
relations. In a strong tie, those who are tied are spatially imagined as
close. The origins of this imagery can be traced back to Simmel ([1908]
2009) and his portrayal of the stranger, in the homonymous excursus
from a chapter on “Space and the Spatial Ordering of Society”. The con-
cept has undergone a confusing (and confused) process since then (Levine
1985). Yet, most of the work on distance (from the Bogardus scale used
in surveys to Bourdieu’s proximity in the social field (1984, 1989) and to
Putnam’s (2000) bonding and bridging social capital) focus on how a set
of characteristics correlates with certain distances between groups of peo-
ple, classes, and categories. The extensive work on homophily (Louch
2000; Yap and Harrigan 2015) follows the same path. Phua et al. (2017)
use a similar approach to understand the satisfaction of following par-
ticular brands through social networking. This preoccupation is a valid
one and the structural organization of social bonds is something which I
will tackle in due time. However, given my subjectivist standpoint and
my commitment to keep the analysis as close as possible to the views and
experiences of Facebook users, my approach to relational distance will be
different. Namely, rather than looking into patterns of relational distance
establishment, I will focus on what being close or distant from someone
entails, as well as the ways in which it is symbolically communicated and
interpreted interpersonally, through the lens of Facebook exchanges.
I begin by thinking of two categories: (a) people who are in the same
waiting room at the dentist and share no particular interpersonal bond
and (b) people who have been dear friends for 50 years. These are two
poles of bonding and between them there is a continuum of different
relational strengths (or distances). There is no clear-cut point between a
weak tie and a strong tie, just as it is difficult to tell when people make the
step from being strangers to having particular tie. In this case, the best
way of conceptualizing tie strength is through its extremes. So, what is for
a social actor the difference between the one with whom she has no tie
and the one with whom she feels the closest? This question brings us back
to impressions about the other and to the different interiorized social
norms which inform them. I argue the person with whom one shares a
bond is significant through one’s own direct experience with them. The
memories we have of the time we shared with each other, the mannerisms
  Introduction    13

specific to the other, and the impression of the other as a unique human
being, how we feel when we are copresent, are central in the construction
of a close bond. Alternatively, with non-bonded others, our impression is
typically derived directly from previously formed and taken-for-granted
meanings (Ivana 2016) and from the norms through which they were
legitimated. It must be said of course all our relations with others are fil-
tered through normativities (e.g. that which the social actor must think
of a certain situation or person, that which she is expected to feel, the
ways in which she should move and act, etc.) (Foucault 1995; Hochschild
2012). However, with strong bonds, these multidimensional norms are
used in a flexible way, adapted, and combined by the subject to match the
interpersonal context and the person with whom one is in contact. In
weak bonds and in contact with strangers, the same social norms are not
employed in the same way to produce new impressions. Rather, they are
implicit in stocks of taken-for-granted meanings, which are immediately
applied to the situation at hand. Thus, the people in the dentist’s waiting
room will make sense of each other in these simplified terms, as “some-
one who has a dentist appointment”, “the one who is interested in the
fashion page of the magazine”, “one of those who are scared”, and so on.
These meanings are not new or particularized; they are simple repetitions
of old unquestioned ones. Considering the other is anxious, and being
amused by his disproportional reaction to the situation he is in, is most
likely an application of meanings about dentist visits and about those
who behave like this person. This transfer of previous impressions to new
situations is specific to the lack of a bond. Thus, with weak bonds, there
is a certain level of generality of impressions which remain largely unal-
tered throughout the contact with the person and the context at hand.
Simply put, people with whom one shares a close tie do not impress the
subject as “one of ” a group, but are meaningful in themselves. In other
words, it helps to have a clear idea of what a reliable person may be like
and about what it feels like to share a bond with such a person, but that
sedimented construction of meaning does not imply that the close friend
will be reduced to being a reliable person. This tendency of regarding the
other and the bond as meaningful in themselves is fueled by intercon-
nectedness. The shared experience of togetherness between the subject
and the other confronts one with the inherent lack of overlap with any
14  G.-I. Ivana

pre-given impressions formed independently of this particular bond and

establishes a derived, but nonetheless separate significance for the actual
tie and for the other (Ivana 2016). The bondless other is regarded through
the lens of an ideal type and through the lens of a pre-established way of
relating with those belonging to that type. In other words, the norms, the
emotions, the expectations, the processes of meaning making in a very
weak bond have a level of generality and a wider applicability, irrespective
of the particularities of the context and of the other person.
Above I have been describing bondlessness and very close bonds as
two ends of a spectrum of relational distances. However, most social
relations are somewhere in between these extremes. Once a bond is
established, be it a relatively weak one, meanings around it will be less
and less shaped by taken-for-granted impressions. Those who are
bonded will find an increasingly individualized significance for each
other in light of their shared experiences. However, I will use the term
“weak bonds” to designate those bonds where the other is meaningful
predominantly still in light of impressions constructed independently
of their actions. For instance, one’s neighbor helps with carrying the
shopping upstairs. That neighbor will be experienced in light of that
interaction in a particularized way, but he will also be read at the same
time in a simplifying manner through pre-given, not entirely reflective
or conscious impressions about clothes or accents. In a closer tie, the
proportions are reversed, with the main sources of meaning making
coming from adaptation of previously held impressions and previously
embraced norms to match this specific person and that which is shared
with them.
This distinction I am proposing in terms of relational distances is
important to make when analyzing Facebook, since users say their reac-
tions and interpretations of content they receive are always filtered
through their bonds. The answer to many of my inquiries, which was
repeated many times, is “It depends who the other person is”. All other
things being equal, a closer and a weaker tie will think differently, react
differently, construct future interactions differently as a result of receiving
the same information about the same user. While this seems hardly sur-
prising, these differences have been entirely left aside in scholarly conver-
sations about social networking.
  Introduction    15

Social interactions have a background which is indisputably socially

constructed; they are governed by the norms and expectations specific to
the interaction level (Goffman 1983; Rawls 1987) and they unfold with
a certain dynamic. Nonetheless, the subjective impressions of the interac-
tors about each other, the assumed strength and type of bond being
shared, the projections about the potential of that bond, their under-
standing of how a certain bond is established and negotiated in direct
interaction are of utmost importance on Facebook, as in any interactional
setting. To summarize, if the interaction is read exclusively in terms of
other criteria than the interconnectedness with the subject, that interac-
tion is tieless. If it is meaningful in terms of the interconnectedness of
experiences of the interactors, it is a tie. As a parenthesis, it must be said
this conceptualization of strong and weak ties is reminiscent of Schütz’s
scale ranging from consociates to contemporaries, with the mention that
I do not assume impressions about the other (or in his terms typifica-
tions) are either exclusively a function of physical proximity, or exclu-
sively cognitive. Rather, they are a function of the centrality/marginality of
the we-relationship in the construction of durable impressions about the other.
To illustrate, someone has a strong bond with their mailman if they
regard the mailman as meaningful in light of the jokes they share every
time they meet, the advice they received from this person when in trou-
ble, and the plans of meeting them again. The bond is weak if their mean-
ing making is primarily derived from general ideal types, such as
“postman”, “Catholic”, “man in his 60s”. This meaning is not entirely
reflective, since these categories may come with a certain emotional back-
ground attached (i.e. “Catholics are frustrating because I met several who
were so conservative”). In the weak bond, the a priori category of mean-
ing overshadows the construction of new particularized meanings for
instances of interconnectedness.
To go back, the unique perspective of each participant in a bond is
reflected in the outer interaction through indicators of distance. These
indicators are not always intended to communicate the exact strength of
the tie, but the strength of the tie that one person feels the other should
read them as having.
One of the cases when this happens is conflict or negative impact the
other had on the subject’s life. If someone made fun of my behavioral
16  G.-I. Ivana

flaws, that would be a very hurtful experience for me. As a result, I would
always maintain a perspective on that person as “the one who hurt me by
doing that” or “the one who is capable of hurting me”, in future mode.
Since my perspective is defined by my own past experience of together-
ness and interconnectedness with that person, that constitutes a tie of
significant strength. Yet, the outer indicators present in my social interac-
tion with that person might not look to express the existence or strength
of that tie. On the contrary, I might have the intention of displaying an
almost tieless interaction.
Another example of a similar discrepancy between the lived bond and
the indicators one offering is, in ties based on reciprocity, the adaptation
of the interaction according to the way the other’s impression about the
tie estimated. Thus, instead of trying to communicate the presence of
what she sees/feels/understands as a strong tie with the other, one might
try to express a weak tie, because of the assumption that it corresponds to
the other’s perspective on the tie. In ties that are not viewed as necessarily
reciprocal, this tendency is not as strong.
Last but not least, this control over the indicators given off about spon-
taneous impressions can be a way of connecting that which is expressed
with iterations and projections about the tie. If I see the other not as some-
one with whom I share anything meaningful, but as someone who I imag-
ine creating a tie with, I might act in a way that indicates the desire for the
projected tie, more so than the lack of the current one. If, based on my
past experiences, certain experiences of social interaction have triggered in
me (or I have witnessed in others) the development of a certain tie, I might
feel the pressure of indicating the existence of that tie through my behav-
ior, although the tie itself might not be present in my lived experience.
Of course, one can try to conceal or express not only the strength but
also the type of tie, mirroring Simmel’s forms of sociation. This is done
not so much through the closeness of the interaction, but through its
tone. An interaction that is intended humorous or seductive is meant to
be read in terms of: “this person sees me as a friendship-type of tie/roman-
tic type of tie.”
However, neither the closeness of the interaction (as an indicator of
the strength of the underlying tie) nor the tone of the interaction (cor-
responding to the type of tie) is necessarily intentional. As Schütz points
  Introduction    17

out through his “general thesis of the alter ego’s existence”, one always
lives either immersed in an experience or turned reflectively towards him/
herself. So, whenever someone experiences an interaction in lived durée
(in Schütz’s Bergsonian sense), all this control over indicators given off
fades away, and mostly spontaneous expressions are left.
Although, as I have mentioned, the impressions which shape a tie and
their exterior indicators are not always compatible, these indicators
remain the only way for another to get a sense of the strength of the tie
and the type of tie they are dealing with, if any. At the same time, even if
subjective meaning of each other’s inner life is not sought after, interper-
sonal readings and reciprocal adjustments of behaviors, emotions, and
expectations will be inherent to social interaction.
This connects with the discussion about relational distance. In terms of
ties, a strong tie is a close tie, whether it is conflictual, hidden, denied,
even to the self, and so on. If one cannot see the other person otherwise
than through their togetherness, the tie is close. In terms of the outer
manifestations, social interactions linked with strong ties are marked by
a socially constructed consensus. And since the strength of the tie is based
on the importance of interconnectedness, the interactional indicators of
strong ties which are part of this consensus often revolve around expres-
sions of how that interconnectedness impresses the bonded subjects.
Examples in this sense include remembering common memories, inside
jokes, and shared secrets, all of which evoke precisely the subjective mean-
ing of the tie itself for those who live it. On a more explicit note, some
indicators may be verbal statements about the importance of the other
person in one’s life and about how the time spent together has impacted
them. Indicators vary according to many coordinates; they are situated
geographically, historically, with respect to gender, class, age, and so on.
Nevertheless, they are generally intelligible for those sharing a particular
social context.
On the other hand, there are also criteria according to which weak ties
and tieless interactions can be read. However, they are not precisely indi-
cators of ties, but indicators of certain characteristics in the absence of
which a certain type of tie cannot grow. In other words, they are indica-
tors of potential. Concretely, the clothes someone wears may be the crite-
rion according to which one is impressed by another person. Clothes
18  G.-I. Ivana

have cultural meanings and subjects’ familiarity with those meanings will
have an impact on their understandings and feelings in relation to the
other. For instance, one may read clothes as the other desire for discretion
or ostentation; they may read very revealing clothes as disgusting and so
on. So, the potential one sees for being tied to the other is filtered through
something like a choice of flashy clothing. Often, not this entire line of
thinking unfolds in one’s mind; moreover these impressions may not be
predominantly driven by reflection. Yet, shortcuts have been created and
features that have no direct link to a certain meaning have come to be
indicators of it nevertheless. In other words, the analysis of bond poten-
tial, rather than of currently existing bonds, must necessarily focus (more
than the analysis of established bonds) on the impressions about the
other as another, as independent from the subject herself, since there is
little interconnectedness to refer back to. These impressions are, as the tie
is still weak, based on ideal types organized in pre-established hierarchies
of desirability, prestige, and so on. Their importance in estimating tie
potential must be acknowledged because impressions based on hierar-
chies of ideal types set the scene for particular bonds to strengthen, and
for others to stagnate.
This being said, when, in weaker ties, we are reading the other without
focusing on their interconnectedness with us, we are still constructing a
relational image about them, but here the reference point is exterior,
whether it is a group, a community, or society. Since bonds are typically
not dyads emerging without any background connections, the impact of
third parties is also very important. On the one hand, the other is the
depositor of certain social influences, but on the other hand, he/she is
part of a web of exchanges in which those influences occur. He/she is not
suspended in a social void. Thus, the other is “smart as compared to most
people/to most of those he/she spends time with”, “a rebel from the
norms I believe the majority of those around follow”, “a stranger to the
community he/she lives in”, “the Asian—the one whose race singles him/
her out from all the others present in that context”. If one sees the other
as a stranger only in relation to them, that is likely to result in a stronger
tie than if they see him as a stranger in general and only secondarily in
relation to them (which would account for a weak tie). From this point
of view, the impression of the other is constructed upon the interpreter’s
  Introduction    19

broader understanding of the world and of a specific group or commu-

nity. This impression about the other’s relational background is also cen-
tral to the evaluations of the potential of particular bonds to develop.
At the same time, entirely tieless interactions have indicators of dis-
tance which are as clearly socially defined as those for close bonds. “Go
to” neutral topics of conversation, physical distance, and time span of
interaction are several of the ways in which tieless interactions are sig-
naled in Western societies. Furthermore, tieless interactions can also be
read in a negative mode, as a lack of a tie; in this vein, the lack of indica-
tors typical for strong ties becomes an indicator in itself. To be clear, these
indicators are not always consciously communicated and they are not
always consciously read, but they do constitute the established manner of
conveying tie strength and form in interpersonal settings and for a social-
ized subject they are spontaneously experienced in embodied ways (like
feeling relaxed or very controlled) and understood fairly accurately.
Some of these issues seem to touch upon the approach specific to social
network analysis. However, numerous sociology scholars have signaled
the atheoretic inclinations of early works within the field of social net-
work analysis and have also made important steps in overcoming this
problem (Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994; Emirbayer 1997; White 2008;
Powell and Dépelteau 2013; Donati 2015). Nevertheless, these develop-
ments in the theoretical understandings of social bonds, their construc-
tion, their patterns, and their social contexts, as well as the growing
preoccupation for ties beyond their formal or measurable quality, have
been largely overlooked in the analysis of social networking platforms,
despite their great relevance for the topic.
All these aspects are particularly important for Facebooking, because
behind much of the information being communicated, the contacts
within one’s network have a relational background. They are ties of differ-
ent strengths, with diverse levels of reciprocity, with a particular historicity
and with envisioned futures. Thus, when attempting to understand what
people do with this platform, how they read it, and the extent to which
certain dynamics from “the online” matter outside this realm (and if so,
how), the interconnectedness between certain users, the stocks of impres-
sions one has constructed about general categories of others, and the dif-
ferences in interacting with others with whom one shares different bonds
20  G.-I. Ivana

are all very relevant. Furthermore, as the interviewees reveal time and
again, it is within this informal relational realm that the stakes of Facebook
are. During my discussions with users, they would often take out their
phones and show me something they found interesting and, whenever
that happened, their stories were preceded by an introduction about the
bond between themselves and the others who either posted that content
or who were linked with the interviewee’s own decision to post that con-
tent. At the same time, for all the relational continuity between people
who are networked on Facebook and outside of it, there are discontinui-
ties between exchanges of information taking place through Facebook and
other sorts of social interactions (face to face, phone calls). The concrete
situations of togetherness which create ties, the situations which allow the
manifestations of that tie, and which also keep it alive and constantly
reshape it: this is the level where Facebook comes into play.

The Structure of the Book

The book is organized in eight chapters, including the current introduc-
tion. The second chapter is an exploration of how we can understand
Facebook from the perspective of social relations. It proposes several clas-
sifications and distinctions which set the stage for the main analysis and
it looks into the premise of non-copresence and its consequences on
social interactions and bonds. Chapter 3 is dedicated to an analysis of the
dichotomy between Facebook and “real life”, from the perspective of the
continuities and disruptions between the lived experience of Facebooking
and everyday life in the offline life world. The fourth chapter is focused
on the analysis of instances of monitoring, reading, checking content
posted by someone else without engaging in any sort of conversation or
feedback. Questions of entitlement, clandestinity, privacy, and the phe-
nomenon of stalking are discussed. Chapter 5 looks into Facebook con-
versations and reciprocal communication. It is divided in two parts:
public exchanges and private chatting. With respect to public posts and
reactions, comments, or shares, several topics which are approached are
the uses of publicness, the dilemma of addressability, habitualized behav-
ior, and public insider jokes. With private chats, simultaneity, experiences
  Introduction    21

of togetherness, and the production of shared here and now are discussed.
Chapter 6 tackles the structural aspects of social relations, by concentrat-
ing on Facebook displays and interpretations of social class, prestige,
markers of symbolic capital, and the instances of keeping up with the
Joneses. Chapter 7 offers an account of emotionality in social network-
ing. More often than not, relational narratives are intertwined with
excitement, embarrassment, worries, pride, or amusement. The aim of
this chapter is to bring together such narratives and to make sense of
what may analytically be called “emotional component” which is dis-
solved into social relations in an environment many find disembodied
and detached. Chapter 8 presents the conclusions resulting from this
incursion into social bonds and how they are liked with the unfolding of
information exchanges on Facebook.

Notes
1. Stocks of impressions is a concept I develop and use as an alternative to
Alfred Schütz’s stock of knowledge, by borrowing, via Sara Ahmed,
Hume’s notion of impression. The purpose of this replacement of knowl-
edge with impression is to account for meaning as being constructed not
only reflectively, but through embodied and emotional experience as well.
The ways in which social actors make sense of their social world are not
only derived from what they know as a result of their ongoing socializa-
tion, but also as a result of previous emotions and embodied experiences.

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 2
It Happened on Facebook

As stated in the introduction, the aim of this book is to look into the pro-
cess of constructing meaning for interactions and for non-­interactional
content sharing on Facebook as integrated in an existing web of ties, cre-
ated on the basis of a mix of face-to-face and long-distance shared experi-
ences with the other, as well as impressions (consisting of embodied and
emotional knowledge) about him/her, together with the expectations and
projections of the subject based on their life course. I regard the tie as
synthesizing all these elements, and it is my intention to explore meaning
constructions for what happens on Facebook in connection with this syn-
thesis. This approach is based on mediation, which rejects the break
between the media and the non-media realm (Miller and Slater 2000;
Silverstone 2002; Couldry 2008). At the same time, the specific moments
in which bonds translate into interaction with the other unfold in an
environment and in a context, and they are constituted of movements,
gestures, behaviors, words, and so on. So, the facilities and the limits
posed to the possibilities of communication have a very direct and non-­
negotiable structuring effect on the interactions and through them on
actual bonds. Users can only write in a given grid, they can use a certain
number of emoticons, and they can post images in a certain format.

© The Author(s) 2018 27

G.-I. Ivana, Social Ties in Online Networking, Palgrave Studies in
Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71595-7_2
28  G.-I. Ivana

From this point of view, there are distinguishable features that can be
attributed to the media and can be analyzed in themselves. In this sense,
it is also important to acknowledge mediatization (Hepp 2013) and dis-
cuss it as complementary to mediation. The perspective I am following in
my analysis of the mediatization of exchanges through Facebook is a social
constructivist one. I do not seek to identify a common logic with other
media or to draw conclusions about the impact certain changes have at a
societal level in an institutionalist framework. Of course, one can argue
that this strict format Facebook provides is also a social product, which it
undoubtedly is, but in this context it is important to note that it is expe-
rienced as a given and as an exterior-shaping element in the interaction.
When we talk about Facebook exchanges of information, about its
uses, and about common practices of users, we refer to a variety of activi-
ties hosted by Facebook (Knautz and Baran 2016; McAndrew and Jeong
2012). People spend time posting something on their own wall, going
through the contents they receive, “giving likes”, or occasionally looking
at entire albums of photos an old schoolmate posted over the years. These
actions, like most of those taking place through Facebook, involve the
relation with people the user already knows (Boyd and Ellison 2007; Ellison
et  al. 2009; Johnston 2009). Thus, we must consider that the context
behind particular practices is always rooted in the existing bond, in past
common experiences the users shared, in previous reciprocal evaluations,
and/or in projections about how their relation may evolve. A man who
had just changed jobs confessed to me he used Facebook to search for the
profiles of all his new colleagues, not looking for a specific piece of infor-
mation, but simply due to curiosity fueled by the knowledge they would
be part of his life for a considerable period of time. On a similar note, a
young woman explained that she would sometimes even browse through
profiles of people she saw in the lunch room in her office building, but
that she had no interest in a complete stranger. She needed the initial
contact, as well as some familiarity with the other, before she had any
desire to explore their Facebook presence. Thus, while bonds are seldom
produced exclusively through Facebook, the possibilities offered to users
by virtue of each other’s readiness to share information online contribute
to these bonds. In order to understand what Facebook brings to social
relations in more detail, we shall begin with a brief discussion of what is
   It Happened on Facebook    29

specific about Facebooking. How is reading about one’s new colleagues

different from talking to them face to face and finding out almost identi-
cal information?
The great advantage of engaging in technologically mediated commu-
nication is that it links us with people who are outside of our world within
reach, to borrow Alfred Schütz’s (1967) term. As McLuhan (1964)
famously observed, this is an extension of our senses. We hear and see
things occurring in a time and/or place that are beyond our bodily capa-
bilities. However, the other side of this extension, McLuhan argues, is
amputation. We hear, but we cannot see, we see but we cannot taste or
touch, and so on. There are a series options and limitations which are
presupposed by Facebook’s design, which immediately differentiate the
experience of “Facebooking” (irrespective of the specific action under-
taken) from the offline world, as well as from other online settings.
However, not being in the same world within reach is not only a con-
straining factor which conditions our possibilities of communication. It
is also a factor which reshapes communication itself in crucial ways. There
are certain features specific to Facebook which make it necessary when
the other is inaccessible, but also preferred when the other is accessible.
Regarding the design and the available options, there is already extensive
work on Facebook algorithms, and the type of structure produced through
them (Bucher 2012, 2017; Tufekci 2015; Chauhan and Shukla 2016).
Suggested pages, commercial content, even which posts we get to see
from our friends—these are only some of the aspects determined by algo-
rithms. However, despite their effects in other regards, these are not the
elements of design which have the strongest impact specifically on shap-
ing interpersonal exchanges mediated through Facebook.
Facebook is neither a system which establishes coordinates of action
for its users, nor a platform where users act freely. What they are doing is
actualizing a set of possibilities they get, in a space constructed through
previous actualizations made by themselves and other users. If starting
tomorrow everybody deactivated their Facebook accounts and nobody
new registered anymore, there would be no Facebook to talk about,
because Facebook itself exists only as a possibility which needs to be actu-
alized. There are no empty profiles waiting to be filled, just as there are no
empty exchanges waiting for the information to be poured into them.
30  G.-I. Ivana

Directionality and Facebook Options

This being said, of all the available options and design elements, I argue
the ones related to directionality are particularly relevant in the context of
connections between users. The content which is shared on Facebook (be
it with one person in a chat or with one’s entire list of acquaintances on
the wall) is meant to reach one or several people and, more often than
not, it does reach them. In the offline environment launching a message
and making sure it was conveyed to the ones who are addressed by it is
fairly straightforward. One looks at others while speaking to them, there
are smiles, adaptations of the tone of voice according to how far the one
who is addressed is standing, and so on. However, on Facebook, intended
and achieved directionality are not always as straightforward. Thus,
Weber’s theory of social action, and particularly his concept of mutual
orientation, reveals an interesting side of social networking. As we will
later discuss in more detail, the topic of clandestinity and the experience
of reading something that is not “meant for you” are very common. This
concern is strongly linked with what users perceive to be their entry right
into the other’s private sphere (Hansson 2008). As Facebookers have
repeatedly pointed out to me, many have had doubts about the intended
recipients of their friends’ posts and these doubts are inherent to
Facebook’s available options.
Facebook allows for contents to be transmitted from the wall of the
user to the newsfeeds of other users grouped in one of the following cat-
egories: the general public, the user’s network of friends, friends of friends,
or particular people selected nominally by the user. Those who have
access to the content can also see who else has access to it, except for the
case when the audience consists of specific people (which appears as “cus-
tom”). The default setting is public. Irrespective of the privacy restrictions
one chooses to apply, the visual organization of information is that of
unilateral exposure. The grid in which the poster of the initial content
writes is different from the ones where possible comments are written.
The design establishes the status of the initiator and the commenter. This
type of expressing oneself is aimed at groups of recipients and can be
particularized. Because of the recipient being collective by default ­(public,
friends, friends of friends), there is typically a fuzziness surrounding the
   It Happened on Facebook    31

issue of what is addressed to whom. This results from the fact that the
categories are large enough for one to assume the sender has not consid-
ered all the recipients. As of July 2016, Facebook counted over 1 billion
daily active users. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research
Center in 2013, the average number of Facebook friends was 338 among
adult users. In this context, it is understandable why a user would feel like
they saw something simply because they happened to be in an acquain-
tance’s circle of Facebook friends. Having had access to private content
gives them no confirmation about whether that user would readily share
the same information with them personally or whether they were
addressed in any way by that post.
The other option of communication, besides posting contents on one’s
own wall that others can see, is addressing direct private texts to one or
more specific. Here, the logic is reversed. The default option is writing a
personal message to one individual and more recipients can be added. All
participants to the conversation can see who else was addressed by the
same message. The initiator and the replier(s) have the same status within
the exchange. By the fact that people need to actually be added to the
recipients’ list in order to receive the content, there is no question about
the directionality of the message. Consequently, it is always clear: the
sender must have selected the name of the receiver from a list of names
and faces in order to send that message. It is not diffused; it is not meant
for others. It is from him/her to me, maybe not exclusively to me, but
certainly also to me. Interestingly, there is no readily accessible option for
mass messages, so the only way to write to more people at once using
private messaging is to add each of them as recipients. From this point of
view, the reciprocal exchanges between users messaging each other are
unequivocal social interactions. However, even in private messaging,
there is the possibility for addressing collectivities as pre-existent groups.
For instance, one cannot send a message to their entire network of friends
at one time, but they can send a message to the group of friends they have
constituted beforehand. Yet, even in this case, each of those receiving the
message has been selected at a certain point by the sender himself/herself.
Consequently, even when addressing groups, the directionality is clearer
than in public posts, which makes the issue of whether sharing that con-
tent or receiving it is an interaction less debatable.
32  G.-I. Ivana

Due to these different features, it is useful to divide the spaces where

content is shared into two categories, generically named “the public” and
“the private”. As I have pointed out above, “the public” has a pre-­
established broad group of recipients that can be narrowed down and
become quite individualized, while “the private” is by default individual-
ized and can expand to large numbers of addressees. Moreover, since in
the private case the directionality is quasi-certain, I will refer to the situ-
ation of private exchanges as “private interactions”. In the case of public
exchanges, I will not use the term “interaction”, unless there is a definite
intended recipient for the shared content.

Are We Interacting?
Laura, a 25-year-old Catalan girl I interviewed about two years ago, told
me one of the main reasons for her being on Facebook was to keep in
touch with people, especially those she does not meet regularly offline. At
the same time, she explained she rarely talks to them, but does check their
profiles and stops to read their posts when they come up on her newsfeed.
What stroke me as odd in her narrative was the concept of keeping in
touch and the practices in which it translated. When I asked her about it,
she confessed that it was something she had thought about herself and
that she was concerned about the sort of connection that was being estab-
lished this way.
This is an area where users and scholars alike often struggle as a result
of collapsing distinct practices into one generic category such as “acting
in a virtual environment”, or “Facebook interaction” or “online self-­
display”. The notion of experience does not clarify much either. It high-
lights the common thread of disembodiment and focuses on sensoriality
and materiality. Yet, the important notion that is often missing is rela-
tional, namely directedness, or the I-Thou relation and Thou orientation,
as they appear in the works of Schütz. While this aspect of online social-
ity is sometimes touched upon (Zhao 2004, 2005, 2007; Bakardjieva
2005; Ralon and Vieta 2011; Wegerif 2013), its implications have not
been fully revealed. Despite Schütz’s Thou orientation being specifically
limited to face-to-face interaction, I argue it can be applied in a fruitful
   It Happened on Facebook    33

way to technological advancements Schütz had not foreseen. Namely, the

very core of the concept is the awareness and acknowledging of the oth-
er’s presence. In the case of Facebook, this presence of the other, not only
in the network, but “on” the content one shares, is verifiable only through
visible action with a clear address.
From Laura’s and others’ stories, this is the major element which trans-
forms Facebook actions (from gazing at profiles to posting songs) into inter-
actions. In order for person A to consider he/she is interacting with person
B, he/she needs to think person B is receiving something and is reading it
as directed to him/her. If an infatuated teenager is looking through photos
of their romantic interest, the owner of the images is not aware of it. If she
also “gives him a like”, she is not only socially validating that content or
displaying solidarity with the poster, but she is also establishing a reciprocal
exchange with him. She is not only saying something about him, but also to
him, in a deliberate manner: “I looked at this, I liked it, and I want you to
know it”. Such feedback is often missing and when that happens, from the
perspective of the initiator, the interaction itself is uncertain. In other words,
the challenge which comes with Facebook’s design is often not in commu-
nicating information, but in establishing a mutual confirmation about the
reciprocal directedness of the messages. As a result, there is confusion about
which attempted interactions failed and which were successful. For instance,
according to the findings of a small survey conducted by Facebook on over
1000 users, “when we asked users how many friends saw a particular post,
the median user guessed 20 friends, while the actual median was 78”
(Source: Facebook Data Science). Besides these quantitative data, there is
also the issue of who exactly sees what one has transmitted. Unless other
interactions occur, Facebook does not offer ways to grasp other indicators
in order to answer this question. This is the case of posts that are published
for groups, rather than aimed at certain individuals.
However, even in the case of private messaging, there is also an uncer-
tainty around the issue of reciprocity. Has it been received? Did the other
person see it/read it? The problem has been partially tackled by the “seen
at…” text that appears to the sender when the reader accesses the m ­ essage.
This is a way of compensating for the lack of indicators that the message
(in some form or understanding) has gotten across, so that the existence
of the interaction will not be doubted.
34  G.-I. Ivana

Secondly, from the perspective of the receiver, if the content has been
aimed at a collectivity (the author’s friend, friends of friends, a thematic
group, etc.), directionality is questioned. Instead of a social interaction,
which is characterized by a reciprocal directedness (or an exchange that is
read as potentially addressed to them, among others, at the very least),
this context appears similar to direct observation, where one person
directs their gaze at the other, without the other doing the same. Indeed,
this is how this one-sided directionality is typically viewed. However, we
have to keep in mind this is a situation where copresence is lacking. In
direct observation, one subject has access to the other in an immediate
way. They notice gestures, movements, a tone of voice, and a series of
other indicators about the one who is observed as a subject in his/her
own right. They can interpret this information and draw conclusions.
Contrastingly, the situation I am describing is one where, on Facebook,
someone receives a content which they do not know is addressed to them
from a person with whom they have interacted before (in most cases) but
who is not in their world within reach at that time. Since the other is only
manifest through the shared piece of information and no other clues, this
situation is then becoming more similar to a third-party report over
someone who is absent. You receive news of their life, but you are neither
interacting with them (lack of directionality), nor observing them (lack
of physical capacity to do so).
Thus, when the user does not address someone in particular and/or
when the recipients do not interpret the message as addressed to them,
the frame of social interaction is replaced by a frame of information gath-
ering. Going back to the question of keeping in touch, as well as the
comparison with reading a magazine about one’s own friends, they seem
to converge in the publication and reception of (apparently) untargeted
Facebook public posts.
However, when it comes to reciprocal directedness, and thus interac-
tion, it is not only established in private chats. References to common
experiences or, more directly, tags (their name and a link to their profile)
accompanying public posts are some of the ways through which the ­person
knows they are being aimed. In this case, feedback in the form of likes or
comments from the ones who were being addressed directly is common-
place and typically expected. The mutual exchange becomes evident.
   It Happened on Facebook    35

What is particularly interesting in this situation is not only the significant

shift from a non-interactional to an interactional setting, but also the
possibility of expansion beyond the dyad of initial participants to the
conversation. Such exchanges are by default viewed by others, who may
feel compelled to contribute and who will inevitably make sense of the tie
between those who are interacting publicly. Assumed levels of intimacy,
attempts at reciprocal face construction or face erosion (Ivana 2016) by
those who are interacting publicly will not go unnoticed. Furthermore,
they will contribute to social evaluations, acceptance/rejection from net-
works, and negotiations of status. At the same time, the interaction may
have multiple participants from the beginning (i.e. more users are being
tagged in the same post). Whether they are only linked to the author of
the post or they also share their own relations is an added dimension.
Nevertheless, the public character of such interactions configurates them
differently than chatting.
With respect to private chatting, the element related to the design of
the network which is most significant is the possibility for audio and
video calling when the interaction is synchronous. This is reflected in a
distinct experience of togetherness on which I will elaborate in a separate
section.
To summarize, the way in which Facebook is designed allows three
types of exchanges to occur between people who know each other and are
part of each other’s circle of friends: (1) non-interactional and non-­
observational transmission and reception of information, (2) direct pub-
lic interactions (which is not necessarily dyadic), (3) private chatting.

 patio-temporality in Facebook Exchanges

S
and Interactions
Up to now, we have gone through some of the differences arising from
the design of Facebook in relation to establishing an exchange. Now let us
turn to the ways in which the lack of a shared here and now shapes the
spatio-temporal frame of the exchange. The following considerations apply
to both public and private exchanges, since they are mostly discussing the
context in which they occur, rather than their particularities.
36  G.-I. Ivana

Once the interaction has been established in the understanding of the

initiator (he/she sent something targeted and knows the other has seen
it), that singlehandedly creates an understanding of a common “here”,
which is the world within reach for both of them and which is circum-
scribed by that which is shared. We are both “here”, “in this conversa-
tion”. When a user from the United States and one from Japan can
contact each other on Facebook, it means that they have the possibility of
constructing a world within reach for both of them in the form of shared
content. This is a third “here”, which is added to two separate “here’s” of
the interactors. In the example above there are “here in the United States”,
“here in Japan”, and “here in our common world within reach”. This
common world within reach can consist of a movie they both saw, an old
picture of a trip they did together, of their chat screens that look identi-
cal, or of a shared article on timeline. In colloquial terms, everyone is “on
Facebook”. Linguistically, Facebook is constructed in a spatialized man-
ner. This space is the common world within reach users share with those
who are not physically copresent, by means of their shared access to the
same content. Just like copresent people can see the same leaf fallen from
the same tree on the same alley, “copresent” users can click on the same
link and view the same video and hear the same jokes and laugh together.
The computer screen as a third, common, here and now of non-copresent
people is a fundamental feature of Facebook interactions. This idea is con-
nected to what Christiansen (2017) views as the unique deterritorialized
social place of online social media.
However, one difference between sharing this world within reach and
the world within reach shared in a face-to-face encounter is choice. On
Facebook, one decides what will be included in the world within reach
she shares with the other. If the two users from above meet and go for a
walk, the fact that there is a song playing at a terrace they pass by is in
their common world within reach, but it is not put there by either of
them. If the song ends up in their worlds within reach via a link that one
shares through Facebook, that was a decision, so the two situations will
be different in terms of meaning construction, an aspect to which I will
come back later on.
Furthermore, the separate “here’s” are also incorporated in the form of
an imaginary of each other’s worlds within reach. The users located in the
   It Happened on Facebook    37

United States and Japan have their screen as a common here, but they
also have an unsurpassable experience of each other’s absence and of their
unshared here. One may witness a thunderstorm; the other will not be
there to see it. And if the common experience of a shared here cannot
come immediately and sensorially, it is constructed in communication.
Facebook users will share narratives about the beauty, the violence, the
unpredictability of the thunderstorm they lived through to help con-
struct this imaginary about their here for others to grasp. They will take
photographs or film it and share those as well, in a constant attempt to
transfer elements of the separate here into the common one.
Yet, unlike in the case of physical copresence, the online micro-world-­
within-reach created through shared content is mediated by the first-­
hand experience of only one of the participants to the exchange. Above,
I have touched upon the problem of choice; contents become shared
through a selection. That which one transfers from their separate here to
the common here of the computer or mobile phone screen is inevitably a
representation of an experience. The moment when the recipient of the
thunderstorm video watches it will not constitute for either party the
same experience as having witnessed the thunderstorm together. Thus, as
a related side note to Facebooking, content that is found (quasi-)exclu-
sively on the Internet (e.g. memes) becomes rewarding to share because it
constructs a common here while also eliminating the experiential asym-
metry of importing elements of the users’ separate worlds within reach.
At the same time, besides the issue of the common here, there is also
the one of the common now. In the dynamics of face-to-face interac-
tions, this problem is less prominent, since there is a certain pace at
which the one’s actions and the other’s reactions happen and are inter-
preted. However, in an environment like Facebook, a time gap occurs
significantly more often and it is linked with the specific features of
“here”. A typical distinction being made in the literature about Internet
is the one between synchronous and asynchronous interactions (Garcia
and Jacobs 1999; Pauwels 2005; Ledbetter 2009; O.  Schwartz 2011;
R. Schwartz and Halegoua 2015). I believe the impact of time gaps in
interactions is very different according to the estimated type of interac-
tion that is initiated. For instance, if one user writes something that
does not require a reply or that they intend as the beginning of a very
38  G.-I. Ivana

short objective-­meaning type of interaction, their experience of the

time gap is not the same as if they write something very personal to a
dear friend who fails to read their message for a week. Drawing on
Bergson (1910), we may say that on the level of the space-time world
the two situations are equivalent, whereas on the level of durée, they are
not. Thus, when interactions are expected to be asynchronous, the ini-
tiator enters in a brief imagined synchronous interaction with the other,
which becomes a parenthesis in his/her flow of the “now”. To illustrate
this idea, let us think of the example of a parent writing a letter for their
2-year-old child to open in 30 years. The letter will be based on the
imaginary about the child having become an adult and it will be written
from the standpoint of a future perfect tense. This is an accentuation of
the logic that occurs in interactions that are expected to be asynchro-
nous. They happen through a jump to a future (imaginary) “common
now”, not through a continuation of an experienced present. If some-
one knows their interaction partner does not have an Internet connec-
tion the next three hours, they will not write asking them to do
something in half an hour. Rather, in their message they will place
themselves in the imaginary of “3 hours from now”. Yet, the reason why
this works as an interaction despite the time gap is the common “here”
that will be accessed in different moments. In this respect, it is impor-
tant to note that the common micro “world within reach” that is con-
structed in online interaction through shared content is fixed over time,
which allows this temporal flexibility. The Facebook screen will look the
same now as in three hours from now. Since it is a micro-­world within
reach made and shaped exclusively by the interactors, when they are
absent, it lacks the engines to unfold, so it gets frozen. This mechanism
lays at the bottom of what Dimmick and Albarran (1994) call “gratifi-
cation opportunities”, or the ways in which spatio-temporal constraints
are overcome.
This brings me to a related topic: the one of irreversibility. Here, the
private and public online interactions differ. Interestingly, the content
that is shared in the space that is public by default (although it can be
narrowed down) can be edited or deleted, while the one from private
messaging cannot. This is an attempt at mimicking the conditions of
copresence in the same “here and now” in Facebook private interactions,
   It Happened on Facebook    39

while the public sharing of content is not designed for that purpose. By
sharing something with others publicly and by deciding what to share,
you are bringing part of your separate world within reach in the common
world within reach where it will be interpreted and read by the others,
and so will your very decision of bringing it in the common world. If
someone changes their mind, they can exclude an item from the com-
mon world within reach, in the time gap in which it has not actually been
reached by the other. Thus, the expected time gap is a period of revers-
ibility in public sharing of information on Facebook. In private interac-
tions, this reversibility does not occur.
On the other hand, when the interaction is expected to be synchro-
nous, the experience of time gaps is stronger. If the other is expected to
communicate “in real time”, it means flow is expected. Yet, in order for
flow to be experienced, the interaction needs to occur on the level of lived
durée. In these conditions, every gap will throw the experience out of
flow and induce a state of “attention to life”. Facebook used to contribute
to this by displaying a measurement of the time passed between replies;
right now, the elapsed time is accessible, but it is not displayed by default.
Furthermore, besides breaking the flow of lived durée, time gaps also
break the continuity of the “here” in the micro-world within reach. Since
absence means fixity on Facebook, when one interactor goes missing, the
other is trapped in a static world, out of which he/she has the possibility
to escape by focusing on their offline separate, ever-dynamic world within
reach. Assuming the interaction is synchronous, it becomes a flow and it
is an experience of time as lived durée (Kaun and Stiernstedt 2014).
Then, the only discrepancy from face-to-face interactions resides in the
existence of two separate “here’s” in addition to the common disembod-
ied here.
Another aspect of online exchanges of information is this partial
disembodiment specific to the alternative “here and now’s” (that
Facebook also allows) (Kang 2007; Young and Whitty 2010; Rodogno
2012). At the same time, a series of scholars have insisted many facets
of embodiment are still present, from gender construction (Garcia
Gomez 2010; van Doorn 2011), to social activism (Barassi 2013).
Still, the lack of the typical bodily indicators of the other’s lived experi-
ence is one aspect of embodiment which remains out of reach. So, two
40  G.-I. Ivana

strategies of re-­materialization have become commonplace. One is try-

ing to find ways of capturing as much as the embodied experience as
possible. In this sense, interaction has to be clear and directionality
well established, time has to be synchronous, the worlds within reach
have to be as similar as possible, and the presence of the other has to
be grasped. This typically includes voice and video calls, where some
indicators of the other’s inner life become accessible, together with
parts of their world within reach. The other strategy is finding other
ways, specific to a mediatized environment, to transmit some of the
information that would have been gathered in a face-to-face interac-
tion, enough for the exchange to unfold without major miscommuni-
cations. This includes the use of abbreviations, such as “lol” (laugh out
loud) or “rofl” (roll on the floor laughing), and conventions, such as
the use of caps lock for screaming and emoticons, which typically rep-
resent facial expressions. In public Facebook posts, the emoticons are
accompanied by a label about the emotional state they stand for, elimi-
nating any ambivalence (and complexity) of interpreting indicators
about the other.
Thus, to summarize, the design and the possibilities offered by
Facebook as a platform directly shape the exchanges of information in
several ways: (1) the different display and reach of private chatting versus
public sharing of contents impact directionality; (2) the lack of copres-
ence, combined with unilateral gazing allowed by Facebook design, favors
new and very specific ways of “staying in touch”, with various levels of
interaction involved; (3) sharing possibilities make the computer screen
of non-copresent users function as a common spatiality, additional to
each user’s separate here; (4) the common here of Facebook is alimented
through users’ conscious choices of content sharing; (5) Facebook
exchanges of information come with diverse expectations of synchronic-
ity and time flow. These aspects are all very strongly linked to what is
allowed for one to do on Facebook, be it for technical reasons, or for
moral or commercial considerations. They function as a frame for both
interactions and non-interactional content sharing. In other words, the
new input coming from Facebook into a user’s bonds must be seen within
these constraints; in turn, the influence of existing bonds on Facebook
(inter)activity must also pass through the same structural filter.
   It Happened on Facebook    41

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 3
Facebook and Real Life

Thinking of Facebook as a network of ties between its users, who typically

know each other face to face before adding each other to their circle of
contacts emphasizes the continuity between the online and the offline
realm. Facebook is never just Facebook, it taps into an underlying rela-
tional web, into existing bonds, sometimes very strong ones, into hopes,
curiosities, complicities, anger, or disappointment between users. In light
of these considerations about bond continuity, it seems like the partial
mediatization of certain bonds has become naturally incorporated into
the relations between people/users without disruptions. The specificities
of Facebook appear like temporary limitations in communication which,
although frustrating at times, have otherwise little bearing on interac-
tions and exchanges of information.
However, there is a particular aspect which questions such a position.
Facebook users often refer to their interactions, their posts, and their
reactions as “on Facebook” or “in real life”. This classification of the two
realms highlights the fact that, despite its continuities and connections
with the offline, Facebook is experienced and understood differently than
the rest of our everyday life. Thus, instead of either taking for granted this
separation between social networking and real life, or, alternatively,

© The Author(s) 2018 45

G.-I. Ivana, Social Ties in Online Networking, Palgrave Studies in
Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71595-7_3
46  G.-I. Ivana

dismissing the formulation used by interviewees as an unfortunate

­metaphor, I propose a systematic analysis of how and why this distinction
is made. The outcome of this analysis will be a better understanding not
only of the border between online and offline, but also a better under-
standing of the extent and the manner in which social bonds go beyond
this border.
As it is perhaps expected intuitively, many users have mentioned
Facebook information exchanges and interactions as “less than” real life,
as replicas which are missing significant parts of face-to-face experience
with another. Paradoxically, some of the interviewees also talked about
ways in which sharing certain contents on Facebook was a way of making
them real. However, there are some differences between these two types
of realities. On the one hand reality is seen as equivalent with publicness;
on the other, it is depicted as non-mediatized.

The Public-Private Axis

Let us take a look at what several users have said regarding the much
discussed public-private axis (Papacharissi 2002; Aarseth 1997; Trepte
and Reinecke 2011; Bateman et al. 2010). Furthermore, one of the topics
explored at length is the reconfiguration of the very notion of publicness
in the context of social networking (Ito et al. 2008; Boyd 2010; Baym
and Boyd 2012). Namely, given the multi-layered audiences, the blurred
boundaries, and the characteristics of social networking (like searchabil-
ity and replicability), publicness has transformed into a set of networked
publics. In this context, I begin the exploration of the links between pub-
licness and reality with a few examples of affirming or confirming events
happening offline through online actions:

I do it a little bit to force myself to be present in the new ways of being; I

do it for professional reasons, since I am working with the media and stuff.
I am not a crowd person. I feel more comfortable as a bit of an outsider, sit
in the corner, but nobody cares about you. So, I did it in a way for profes-
sional reasons, as a person who has to earn a living in that segment, so it’s
better for me to know what the things that happen in those spaces are.
   Facebook and Real Life    47

Sometimes I go to a seminar and tweet a little bit about it, just to make
sense of what it is to be there. I think that is why I participate more on
Tweeter than Facebook. (SB11)
INT: Can you think of something that someone posted that triggered a
positive emotion in you?
SB13: Yes, it’s easy. After the last barbeque that we made, I don’t know
who, but one of my friends, took a picture and it was a very nice picture, a
group picture and when they uploaded it on Facebook and they tagged me,
I felt happy to be part of that, the feeling of the group being there and
remembering that moment; calçotada (note: Catalan gathering where
grilled green onion is eaten) in fact, not barbeque. (SB13)

In the first example, the interviewee feels that he is giving reality to his
action of participating to a seminar by tweeting about it. In the second
case, although the respondent had been part of that group gathering and
definitely had some memories of it, it took someone posting that photo
on Facebook, for him to feel happiness and belonging to the group. In
these two cases, the very fact that the information was on Facebook is
highly relevant. However, the perception of more reality is not given by
passing the information through the filter of the media. The disembodi-
ment, the ambiguous directionality, the spatio-temporal specificities have
no importance whatsoever for them here. Rather, the content becomes
real through its public character. If one is to imagine ways of making
information public without the use of the media, this would equally
result in the increase of reality of that information. So, here, Facebook
stands for public, not for mediatized.
When talking about the changes that occurred with industrialization,
secularization, and the concentration of the population in the big city at
the end of the seventeenth century, Sennett (1992) points out to the dis-
tinctions between the public and the private realm and the ways in which
the boundaries between the two have softened as a result of the need for
reading the other, for attributing meaning to the (limited) information
that was available about the other and for evaluating his/her credibility.
And the means for answering these questions was looking beyond the
mask, in Sennett’s terms, or looking at the private life. The information
from the private became the tool to evaluate the public. Thus, the conse-
quence of this process is a more careful protection of the private from the
48  G.-I. Ivana

public eye, a greater control and selectivity over what is displayed. That is
the information according to which others will make sense of you; that
will shape your interactions with those around you; so that is why that
information is real. When users are willing to share something with their
network, they accept that information to become real. In the quotation
about being tagged at a reunion with friends, the interviewee felt that sort
of exposure more real because it meant the tagger was willing to admit to
others the fact that they are friends and spending time together. He was
willing to allow that information on Facebook, which was equivalent to
agreeing to be evaluated according to it. The tagger had no issue with
being viewed by others as the friend of the interviewee and it is because
of this that the interviewee himself feels more included in the group than
he would have if he had just participated to the party privately. In this
logic, the sense of reality is tied with publicness, but also credibility, con-
firmation of worth and expected scrutiny from those receiving the
content.
Confusingly, but interestingly, the opposite view is expressed by
another user. He points out the lack of importance of Facebook’s public-
ness in relation with reality. I will quote a segment of our conversation:

INT: But you said your relationship status appeared on you wall. How did
that happen?
SB6: I have no idea. It was just I don’t know… it just happened. It was
not something on purpose, for others to see, it was just for me and her. It
was something between us.
INT: But did you feel it as being more official because it was on
Facebook?
SB6: Hmm, to a certain extent it was more public, but being more pub-
lic was not the purpose of it appearing on my wall.
INT: Then is it ok if I ask what the purpose was?
SB6: Hmm, I have no idea. It probably didn’t have a purpose. It was just
between me and her: ok, let’s do this/oh, let’s do it. As far as I remember, I
think she was the one who decided to make it public. I didn’t care about
that.
INT: And why do you think she did that?
SB6: Hm, I have no idea. It’s not something important. Of course hav-
ing a relationship with someone is important, but having it on your
   Facebook and Real Life    49

Facebook account, well it doesn’t actually matter, at least for me. It’s not
like “ok, I am gonna brag about being in a relationship with him or her “.
From my perspective, you cannot have a purpose in that. (SB6)

Here, the interviewee does not see the any reason for wanting to pub-
lish his relationship status on Facebook, but at the same time has no
reason to keep it private. Although one might argue that being seen as
single or committed will be reflected on the interviewee’s social life and
that the reality of his relation will be different and so will the reality of
how he is generally perceived, he does not consider this to be the case. On
the other hand, an issue that concerns him is bragging. In other words,
the fact that he shared that piece of information may lose its relevance in
the eyes of the others as a result of the suspicion that the reason for post-
ing it on Facebook was particularly to impress, and this suspicion neu-
tralizes all the other conclusions that might have emerged from the
information itself. In this sense, his position on the publicness of Facebook
gets closer to the two examples mentioned above. The same issues of
credibility and expected scrutiny are central, but the conclusion differs.
One explanation for this difference derives from the actual content being
made public, as the respondent feels his romantic status should not be
something of great relevance in potential evaluations. His skepticism
highlights the idea that the increased sense of reality which comes together
with publicness is also strongly dependent upon expected consequences
of particular information being made public, as well as upon estimated
criteria according to which evaluations occur. At the same time, his rep-
etition of the idea that, despite the accessibility of the information about
his relational status, this was something between himself and his partner
highlights the tension in demarcating the private from that which will
stand as ground for assessment. He does not wish to brag. Put differently,
he wishes to make clear he did not make this information public in an
attempt to have a positive impact on how he would be publicly evaluated
in the future. He may be aware of that result, but he does not actively
pursue it.
In all the examples mentioned above, users make a distinction between
Facebook (as an environment of publicness) and their offline lives.
However, despite this distinction, what happens on Facebook and what
50  G.-I. Ivana

happens outside of it are not in contradiction. Through its public charac-

ter, the online information is seen as confirming, accentuating, or bring-
ing new light to (often private or lesser known) aspects of the offline. Yet,
the discourse where Facebook is depicted as opposed to “real life” is also
present in various ways in the interviewees’ positions. In order to explore
the instances where the reality of the content is not enhanced by the net-
work, I will start with the distinction many users make between Facebook
and the real life:

(after being asked what were the reactions she received after posting photos
she did not like) Most of the people commented on the pictures where I
looked fine, they liked it or made a comment, saying you look gorgeous or
you’re pretty. On that occasion, when I chose the bad one, they refused
commenting. They preferred not to comment and to tell me in real life
“What are you doing? Why did you choose that picture?”, but they didn’t
comment, they told me in real life. (SB5)

This respondent feels Facebook and non-Facebook are two different

worlds, but the distinction between the two is still given, in my interpre-
tation, by the fact that the others commented in private, not by how that
communication was conditioned by technical means. What is also impor-
tant to note in this context is that while reality and publicness seem to go
hand in hand for the interviewees mentioned above, there seems to be a
tension between them in this case. At the same time, this quotation is also
distinct because it reveals the specific sort of publicness of Facebook. The
audience is made of direct contacts, who share personal bonds, and this
makes for a relational dynamic. The “viewers” do not simply watch and
evaluate, they may also meet or call the author of certain contents and say
“what were you thinking?” Besides publicness, the emphasis falls on the
underlying exchange. Being seen attending a seminar, participating to a
gathering of friends and being in a romantic relationship were all strongly
unilateral cases, which evoke the type of publicness of earlier modernity.
Yet, as soon as the situation requires it, the anonymous audience morphs
into identifiable individuals. And the fact that the respondent posted “an
ugly picture” is enough of a violation of Facebook normativity to encour-
age such answers. To be clear, all audiences may react in one way or
   Facebook and Real Life    51

another towards what is presented to them. However, here the reaction is

private, and the user finds it more “real” precisely because it speaks of the
bonds behind what appears to be personal display and one-sided image
management.
Another example around the issue of publicness is the following:

INT: And the place where you work, or your studies, you said you men-
tioned those, but religion, politics, why didn’t you fill those in?/ SB1:
Because they are not appropriate, at least in my opinion, in this context.
They don’t have, I don’t know, I didn’t feel like writing me on a social net-
work, I mean, not as a public profile. (SB1)

The formulation “writing me” is very clearly connected with the sense
of reality. It suggests exposing what she feels is her “real self ” and she
explicitly says she would not do that on Facebook, on the public profile.
So, it is precisely the public character that is making her decide to limit
the openness she invests in her profile. This statement is connected to a
theme to which the user talking about his romantic relationship also
eludes. Namely, the problem of which contents one feels should be in the
public eye and which should not constitute criteria for general social
evaluation. Both this woman and the man above used the notion of
appropriateness to the context. Furthermore, she, like many others who
discuss Facebook’s publicness, has an accurate idea of who is part of her
network and to whom certain information she posts is available. In this
respect, besides context suitability, there is also an appropriateness in rela-
tion to various people. For instance, the presence of parents and former
school teachers is seen to limit appropriateness. Also, conflicting views
with close bonds generate doubts about what is appropriate for users to
share publicly. One person confessed to me she wanted to post an article
containing a very serious critique of the pope, but considered it inappro-
priate towards a number of close bonds who were ardent Catholics.
Several interviewees explained they “know the best practice” of separating
contacts into different networks and making different contents accessible
to different people, but the overwhelming majority of them did not (only
one exception). Again, here the so-called audience each user has gets bro-
ken down in the mind of the subject, into very specific groups or
52  G.-I. Ivana

i­ndividuals. Thus, the appropriateness of information made public on

Facebook is shaped by the normativity of the interpersonal bonds of dif-
ferent strengths one gathers in their network. In this sense, the type of
publicness of Facebook profiles is similar to that of a pre-urbanized com-
munity, a virtual village in which those with whom you are connected are
the people you know and some of whom you have known your entire life.
This idea is clearly captured by the concept of the networked self
(Papacharissi 2011).

The Mediatized-Non-mediatized Axis

However, the two worlds, the inside and outside of Facebook, can be
conceptualized not only as public/private, but also as mediatized/non-­
mediatized. Here is an example of an interviewee talking about it that
way:

SB10: You know, on Facebook you have some really close friends, who are
your close friends in real life (…) INT: But earlier you made this distinc-
tion between Facebook and real life. I am curious to know why you made
this distinction or why don’t you feel Facebook as being real life?/ SB10:
Because, I don’t know. There are some people I don’t talk to in real life, I
mean outside of Facebook. And on the other hand, there are some people,
close family, or work colleagues who I talk to every day and don’t talk to
them on Facebook. (SB10)

This interviewee comes back to the relational core of Facebook.

However, while she acknowledges ties being at the center of her own
activity on the platform, she signals the fact that the overlap between the
online and the offline is only partial. The main reason for that is the mis-
match between the strength and importance of a bond and its Facebook
manifestation. This consideration is, I believe, emblematic for under-
standing the necessity of research about social media that goes beyond
the analysis of online behavior, into how that behavior is connected with
broader bonds. Having said this, I am linking this quotation to the notion
of mediatization, because it is the design of the network which may
   Facebook and Real Life    53

explain the gaps between bond closeness and disproportionate Facebook

reflection of the bond. Namely, particularly with very weak ties, the lack
of directedness of information and the possibilities of silent overlooking
have an impact on the difference between the online and the offline facets
of a bond. At the same time, the lack of accessibility of particular people
who are “not on Facebook” is an issue of mediatization which has not
been overcome.
SB3 also shares the feeling of a different nature of the mediatized and
the non-mediatized environment when it comes to social interaction. To
her, the differences come from the different capabilities allowed by the
two environments:

INT: You make this distinction between what is on Facebook and in

real life and I’d love to know why you make that difference./ SB3: I
can’t even think of when I made it. It probably just came naturally.
Well, why do I make this distinction. Because there are certain aspects
that I think are more obvious in the face to face interactions and there
are certain other aspects that are more obvious on Facebook. And
maybe Facebook is not as telling as real life because I think everything
you can grasp on Facebook you can also get in real life. But what you
do have on Facebook is time to put it together. Because in real life you
miss things.(…). (SB3)

This user talks about the limited information available on Facebook as

compared to a situation of face-to-face interaction. The lack of availabil-
ity of particular cues from the other is one of the typically signaled con-
sequences of disembodiment in literature about the non-copresence
(Waskul 2002, 2005; Miller 2011; White 2006). She also mentions the
lack of synchronicity as time for a more reflective approach to the
exchanges. The lack of synchronicity is another common topic in analy-
ses of social media, particularly in the scholarship on the use of social
media in educational purposes (Pullen Mark and Snow 2007; Borup
et al. 2015). Thus, this interview fragment pinpoints precisely the fea-
tures of mediatization as the key to what distinguishes Facebook from
“real life”. However, her words maintain the same focus as the previous
interviewee: the bond with the other.
54  G.-I. Ivana

It is important to note that for most respondents, including the exam-

ples above, the weight of the offline is significantly higher and it is the
main indicator for making sense of what is happening within the net-
work. Additionally, as subjects socialized in the offline world, many feel
the architecture of the mediatized environment does not always allow the
expressions they wish to transmit, which is precisely the aspect which is
emphasized in analyses of how bonds change with the online setting
(Turkle 2011):

INT: And in the statuses, do you look more for factual information? What
they did? Who they were with? Or are you more interested in the emo-
tional side? If they had a bad day/ SB2: Let me think I think… what they
do mostly. Because with emotions you had a bad day, so what? What do
you want me to do about it? What should I say? Hey, it’s ok, here’s a virtual
hug? I don’t know. (SB2)
I just don t like Facebook chat. I just go on Facebook if I want to see
something, have some news about my friends or related to the events or
groups that I have created, so see where I am supposed to go, but personally
I don t like to speak through this chat and to get in touch with my friends
using this chat. (SB13)

For these two interviewees, the problem lays in the possibilities and
limits of the network. In the first example, the respondent feels he cannot
have a significant interaction with the other person, because through
Facebook you cannot do much else than send a virtual hug. Moreover, he
is bothered by the other person who does not acknowledge or accept this
and acts as if real relations could unfold within Facebook. The second
interviewee limits his interactions on Facebook to exchanges of practical
information, even when it comes to private conversations, like the chat-
ting option. Consequently, he is not entirely satisfied with the way the
interaction changes by becoming mediatized. In this respect, additional
research into generational gaps may highlight whether and to what extent
the anchoring of interactional expectations into the offline experience is
also specific to users aged under 20, whose socialization may have
included different means and patterns of interaction. However, for users
over 20, the offline frame of reference clearly guides their experience and
understanding of online exchanges.
   Facebook and Real Life    55

A Little Less Conversation (Typify Me)

Until now, I have identified two main axes respondents invoke as impor-
tant with respect to the distinction between the online and the offline:
publicness and mediatization. The two axes are typically brought up in
connection to “real life” and what makes Facebook separate from it.
Having said this, it is interesting to note references to the public and
respectively mediatized character of the network have different logics
behind them: in the first case it is the logic of the construction of an
imaginary about the world that is within reach for only one of the partici-
pants to the exchange, while in the second it is the logic the construction
of a common world within reach that would compensate distance for
those telecopresent. In the former, we have diffuse directionality, while in
the latter the addressee is well established. In this respect, I would like to
make the distinction between posts inviting other to view/read/listen
something of me or with me. When asked whether he thinks public posts
are released by Facebook users with the intention to reach particular peo-
ple, an interviewee talks precisely about this distinction and puts it in the
following words:

I don’t think they are for his friends, I think they are for himself, for his
necessity to make things public, not for the others, not these things. If I
publish some news, yes, it’s for the others, but if I publish a photo, I just
wish the others to see the time I am having. That’s just how I see it.
(SB23—translated from Spanish)

The “of me” perspective involves my world within reach to be imag-

ined by the other, either as a snapshot, or as a plot. But, besides whether
I am offering information for a snapshot or a plot, the key for how
Facebook information will be interpreted also lays in the bond itself.
Namely, if the bond is weak, the other’s impression of me is derived from
an ideal type; thus, sharing my experience will add new information to
the same typification. If the other has a sedimented impression of me
according to our interconnectedness (memories, shared beliefs, emo-
tions) rather than through reduction to an ideal type, they will read even
a snapshot of experience as part of a plot with which they are not fully
56  G.-I. Ivana

familiar. Neither of these will have a direct impact on the experience of

togetherness I have with them. Whether we are talking about a static or a
dynamic imaginary of me, this is not an experience of growing old
together. If such experience has already occurred previously, users point
out, the extra information gotten through Facebook is not of much use
for redefining ties and stable impressions. However, when the ties are
weak enough that the other is interpreted as isolated rather than in con-
nection with the subject, information becomes central for constructing
new impressions. In this case, someone’s Facebook activity is a valid way
of gathering knowledge about them.
However, if I am constructing a common world within reach, that sets
the scene for a “with me” approach and a thou orientation. That world
within reach can be simultaneously experienced in lived durée, although
the other will remain out of reach in this common experience.
Going back to the issue of reality as it results from the interview frag-
ments, the distinction between “knowing of me” and “being with me”
appears very clear-cut in the users’ discourses. Namely, the information
about the other as someone who is not accessible is considered real, the
interaction with the other is not. According to the interviewees, the net-
work excels in knowledge diffusion, but not in online interaction. Thus,
Facebook becomes a generator of reality in the sense of constructing a
projection about the other’s world within reach and lived experience in a
here and now that the interpreter does not have access to. What I call a
“him/her orientation”, or what Schütz regards as the subtype of the they
orientation that has the most concreteness, is the manner of relating to a
particular (known) other in the times of physical distance and lack of
interaction. That is reality because it will enter in the general framework
according to which the other will read the author of the content and
because their stock of impressions will be updated. By being public, the
information is expected to be assimilated by those who are exposed to it
and shape further interactions between the poster and these persons. Or,
if one is not the author of the post, but just tagged, it is a way through
which the author of the post is presenting the tagged one, for others to
make sense of. And the main way in which one can make sense of another
who is not in the same world within reach and with whom I do not share
a strong previous bond is through their own world within reach (their
   Facebook and Real Life    57

interactions, their taste, their location, etc.). For instance, when asked
about his habit of making a short video of himself from all the places he
visited and posting it on Facebook, an interviewee explained:

Oh, it’s just something I want to share with my friends, to make them jeal-
ous (laughs). They already think I have this fantastic lifestyle and that I’m
a womanizer: “You are the most exciting person we know”, they tell me.
(SB40)

Thus, he was trying to make that image real by putting it in the others’
projections about him and their projections of his world within reach
that they were not part of. The aim was not constructing a common here
and now with those who were far away, or bridging experiences, but
encouraging the construction of a certain imaginary for the others about
what must have been his world within reach. That imaginary, in turn, will
come back in the interactions with the author of the posts. These respon-
dents are expecting to be the professional in media, the one with the great
social life, the guy with the great girlfriend, or the one traveling to all
those beautiful places for the ones who view their posts. These exchanges
of information do not create a common here and now because they are
(or have been) experienced in lived durée by the author of the post, while
the one who is far away only has the experience of reading, watching,
looking at representations of what the author lived. For instance, another
respondent describes how he chooses his profile pictures:

I can’t really post my worst picture. I don’t want to make a fool of myself. I
post photos where I look relatively ok, but I post especially with what is
happening around me. It’s not like oh, look how well I came out in this
one, let’s post it! I have started posting more pictures where what is behind
me or what I am doing is more interesting. My current profile picture is a
picture of me (you can barely notice me in a corner) on a rock in Meteora.
The rock was incredibly high and abrupt. I went to a dangerous spot, where
if I moved an inch, I’d fall (…). I looked down and my legs were shaking.
My girlfriend was far away and trying to also capture the landscape in the
picture. If you look at the picture, I seem very relaxed (…) but I kept
thinking oh, please take the picture so that I can go! Take the picture
because I am dying here! (SB32—translated from Romanian)
58  G.-I. Ivana

This fragment shows how the focus of the user is not on directly pro-
jecting an image about himself, but trying to construct an imaginary of
his world within reach and his experience of that world within reach for
those living in a different here and now. That imaginary is, in turn,
expected to be integrated into how he will be typified by those who saw
the content. It is also important to notice the dissociation from the prac-
tice of choosing photos to post based exclusively on aesthetic criteria. He
prefers sending a message about his world within reach than directly
about himself. In other words, he prefers framing the action of posting a
profile picture, which is per excellence an action “of me” in such a way
that it looks as if it was a “with me”. This attempt has no chances of suc-
cess, since the experience that is evoked is one that the user alone has had
access to. Thus, it will construct by default an imaginary about his world
within reach rather than a common space of interaction. The interviewee
himself is aware of the picture’s limited potential of constituting a com-
mon world within reach, since he explains how different his lived experi-
ence has been from what he is projecting through his post.
But, since one can choose what to share (or what to allow), the pro-
jected world within reach of that person by someone who is not in the
same here and now becomes a reflection on the one who made the choice.
It ceases being a question of what the world within reach tells about the
subject to whom it belongs. It is a question of how one is willing to con-
struct an imaginary of his/her here and now for those who are away to use
in typifying him/her. That is why several of the interviewees mention
many of the things they read as inappropriate or unflattering in others
posts are things they do themselves, but they are different in choosing not
to share them. So, the poster is not evaluated (exclusively) according to
his/her world within reach (as that world appears in the imagination of
the viewer), but according to what he/she has decided is worthy of
­entering the others imaginary of his/her world within reach. One respon-
dent makes the following statement:

I find nothing worse than posting a song by Salam (note: Romanian

singer). Even if you listen to it, I will not throw stones at you if you listen
to it at home where nobody sees you and you’re in your own corner. That’s
   Facebook and Real Life    59

it; maybe you had too much to drink that night. Go and listen, but do not
post it. (SB21)

So, put differently, what was being evaluated was not only the taste or
how the other constructed parts of his/her world within reach, but the
choice of sharing that and allowing it to give rise to a certain imaginary
about his/her here and now for those who were not around and whose
stock of knowledge in relation to him/her, he/she has control over.
Furthermore, the content that is shared is passed through a filter of
consciousness, as we have seen in all the quotations above. Yet that filter-
ing is known to everyone, so what results is a snapshot of the world within
reach of the other as he/she wishes it to be imagined. In respect to the
question of reality, there is a certain concern derived from this conscious-
ness. Namely, it is the bias in providing information for the others con-
struction of an imaginary about the poster’s world within reach. In
relation to this issue, most interviewees claim to have noticed a strong
tendency from other users to inflict an idealized version of their world
within reach on the imaginary of people in their network.

I think every social network is mirroring the reality, but it is also a place
where you can go and be more interesting or sort of… twist things. It is not
as good as being in reality. (SB34)

From this perspective, the posting of the other or the tag is seen as
more desirable. It displays an image about one’s world within reach with-
out that person having had a say in it. So, some of the possible suspicions
of overly favorable representations are eliminated. This is an excerpt from
another one of the interviews:

INT: But what you are saying, if I understand it correctly, it was not the
same whether you posted those pictures or someone else posted them and
tagged you in them. Did it have a different meaning for you? Was it more
exciting if someone else posted them?/ SB15: Oh, yes! Definitely! Because
if you post a picture of yourself I posted a few pictures of myself and maybe
I tagged myself, maybe I didn’t. I usually don’t tag myself, only if I really
like myself in that picture. I want to show the best side of myself, of course.
60  G.-I. Ivana

So, the fact that someone else uploads pictures of you makes you feel that
other people appreciate you (?) I don’t know/INT: But have you ever
thought about the fact that other people in your network will see that you
have been tagged by someone else and that would increase in a way your
social status?/SB15: Oh, yeah! I have thought about it (laughs). So, for
example I go to a birthday party with my school friends and someone from
work sees the pictures and he tells me oh, I see you did this, I think that’s
cool (laughs). (SB15)

So, on the one hand, tags are interpreted as a form of acceptance from
the ones that have shared a here and now with the interviewee and who
are willing to display that by sharing a content that will be added not only
to the projected world within reach about the interviewee, but also to the
projected world within reach about the one who posted. To make it
clearer, let us say the person who posted certain content is person A,
while the interviewee is person B. By having posted a content where he
tagged person B, he is not only contributing to the construction of an
imaginary about person B’s world within reach, by person B’s friends.
He, person A, will also contribute to the projection of his world within
reach by his own friends. That is why for person B that would be a con-
firmation of person A’s high opinion of him.
On the other hand, it is a question of expected (or experienced) effects
the posted information has for those who have access to it, but who are
not in the world within reach that the status, photo, video is referring to.
In the quotation above, it is the construction made in the mind of the
work mate about the lifestyle of the interviewee, based on photos where
he was tagged. Another interviewee says, in relation to the topic of being
tagged (especially in photos):

There are different kinds and ways of doing this, because I have friends who
would like frequently go and delete the photos of them and just have these
5 pictures showing them from a point of view or what they want to be seen.
Some people want like loads of pictures and some of them are really careful
about it. (…) I have more than 600. Most of them are really ugly and really
silly, so it’s not like I actually wanted to sort them out, but many of them
show me in situations I like or enjoy, so in that way it might be OK.
(SB28)
   Facebook and Real Life    61

So, in other words, she interprets the variation in the amount of shared
pictures as a conscious decision of those tagged, a decision based on that
according to which they want to be typified: what they want to be seen
as.
This him/her orientation, resulting from the construction of an imagi-
nary about the world within reach of those with whom one does not
share a here and now, is typical for the “of me” category, and it can only
be obtained through public undirected sharing of information. When
directionality occurs, even if the content that is exchanged is of me, rather
than with me, the existence of the interaction already means to the con-
struction of a common world within reach, however limited. This middle
ground is represented by interactions, be they public or private, with
specified recipient, which are still focused on the imaginary of the sepa-
rate worlds within reach of the interactors, but in which something that
is ours is created as well through interaction. In this situation, whether
the focus is on the constructed experience of togetherness and the com-
mon micro-world within reach created by it or it is on the imaginary of
the here and now of each other is a question of interpretation and of how
those involved read the interaction. Some of the possible sources of vari-
antion are the type and strength of tie and the past interconnectedness
between the interactors, but that is an issue I will return to later.
As we have seen, it is the “of me” mode that generates an experience of
reality, while the directed interaction does not. So, we might ask ourselves
why that is the case. I believe this can be explained by the fact that the
construction of an imaginary for your world within reach for the others
is a process that has never been based on a common here and now.
Knowledge of someone, the him/her orientation, is, in any context, based
on someone who is absent and of whom an imaginary is developed. That
happens when someone tells a story or shows pictures from their vaca-
tion, which evokes a different here and now, when two people are talking
about an absent third party or when one simply thinks of what a friend
who is not around is doing. All these ways of knowing of another func-
tion similarly to what happens on Facebook. At its core, any story telling
is a construction of an imaginary about a different here and now. Thus,
subjects have been socialized in a way that allows them to find patterns to
apply for this type of information exchanges. You read it as if they were
62  G.-I. Ivana

showing you photos from their vacation, you read it as if someone else
told you the other got a new job, you read it as if you imagined what they
did when they were away just by the previous experiences you had with
them. Or, if you are at the other end of the communication chain, you
expect it to be read in those ways. Consequently, reality in this case comes
from the incorporation of the new information in the stock of knowledge
about the other and the use of that information in creating an impression
of him/her; and the expectation on the part of the information provider
that this process would occur.

 he Difficulty of Togetherness
T
and the Constantly a Posteriori Experience
of Interaction
Yet, when it comes to generating realities in interaction and to construct-
ing togetherness and a common shared micro-world within reach,
Facebook has limited potential. However, before going into details, there
is one aspect that needs to be clarified. I have been making the distinction
between inviting people to get information with me and of me and I have
made an equivalence between the “with me” category and interactions.
Now, since the focus is on interactions, it is important to mention that
constructing a common micro-world within reach means experiencing
something with me, but that implies also experiencing me. If knowing of
the other helps construct the imaginary of each other’s distant worlds
within reach, being with the other helps construct experiences of
­togetherness. Thus, clearly directed interaction means experiencing with the
other and, through that, experiencing the other. In this sense, the actual
conversation with the other, as opposed to the non-interactional exchange,
is particularly relevant. This is an issue which Turkle’s (2015) recent book
on the importance of conversation in the digital age tackles in a detailed
and convincing manner. However, her analysis places conversation mostly
outside technologically mediated communication. Through the distinc-
tion between being with the other and knowing of the other, I attempt to
reveal particular nuances to the online experience. Thus, I claim, the
   Facebook and Real Life    63

c­ onstruction of the common micro-world within reach can be realized

through the experience of togetherness and through interconnectedness.
By having an influence on my experience of certain here’s and now’s, the
other brings me in his/her reach and reciprocally. And the area where
interconnectedness of experience can be achieved is this common con-
structed world within reach for the two interactors. It is a world where
they share things and have access to each other. The topic of online shared
experience and virtual togetherness has already been analyzed with respect
to online communities (Bakardjieva 2003) and romantic partnerships
(Ben-Ze’ev 2004; Holmes 2014). Building on this work, I propose a par-
allel analysis between such instances of togetherness and the very com-
mon practice of “keeping in touch” in the absence of online moments of
togetherness.
Simply by addressing another person on Facebook, one is initiating a
sphere of interconnectedness, by suspending their here and now and
entering into the here and now of an interaction, where they are also pull-
ing the other out of his/her here and now into that interaction. In con-
trast, knowing of the other does not trigger this togetherness, as it is not
aimed at a common or reciprocally directed experience. Yet, if knowing
of the other does not require, by default, physical presence, interaction
traditionally does.
In order to know of me, the others can receive information in their there
and then, but in order to experience me, in order for interconnectedness of
experience to occur, we need to be in at least a particular form of the necessar-
ily common here and now. I have mentioned above that the situations
where the other is directly addressed, but when the content that is
exchanged is about the separate worlds within reach of each interactor, as
being the middle ground between the knowing of me and the interaction
with me. On the one hand, by addressing one another, the interaction
and the experience of togetherness will emerge, but so will the image of
the world that is/was within reach for the other and not me. Whether the
aspect of sharing or the aspect of constructing an imaginary for the absent
is predominant depends on the key in which it is intended by one and
interpreted by the other. I might tell someone about the great restaurant
I have been at because I am thrilled about the restaurant and I would like
to be imagined there by the other, while they might read it as a moment
64  G.-I. Ivana

of connection we are having in the current conversation by that which is

shared. Yet, Facebook users argue that sinking into a common here and
now is not easy to achieve in this environment. From this point of view,
users often talk about interactions happening on Facebook as unreal.
For instance, when asked if he sees having someone as a friend on
Facebook is a way of maintaining contact with that person, one inter-
viewee affirms:

It’s a parche, as we call it in Spanish, a supplement. Now, for instance, I

have many friends who remained in city S. and the only relation we have
now is through Facebook and I know that with time, many of them will
disappear. Because it is something that is not real, I mean you cannot do
Skype or something more interactional, I mean more Facebook is good so
that from time to time you know something of that person, but you cannot
maintain a relation with a person over Facebook. (SB23—translated from
Spanish)

Correlating this quotation with the previous statements about the

unreal feeling of Facebook interactions, a few elements appear as central.
The timing of interactions is different and so is the selection of interlocu-
tors. At the same time, the range of opportunities of interpreting the
other as well as the possibilities of being interpreted and having an impact
on them are different than in face-to-face interactions. This connects to
the issue of disembodiment and to the relation between written dialogues
and audio/video calls.
With respect to the timing of the interaction, one of the interviewees
above was talking about the fact that in exchanges happening on
Facebook, the dynamic is different from face to face, allowing for the
interpretation of the other. So, in other words, it allows for the interac-
tion to be interpreted mostly reflectively rather than becoming a flow in
lived durée. Flow is a notion which the scholarly literature on social net-
working has begun focusing on increasingly over the course of the last
three years, in order to capture the dimension of the lived spatio-­temporal
experience of the users (Kaun and Stiernstedt 2014; Kwak et al. 2014;
Kaur et  al. 2016). To continue, the absence of flow means that the
exchange does not immerse the participant in a different here and now
   Facebook and Real Life    65

than the one he/she had been living in. It is a form of constantly a poste-
riori experience. From the very moment in which a user receives informa-
tion from another, they are after the interaction rather than in it. This
shift from the offline environment to Facebook is primarily linked with
pace and temporality. As flow breaks down, one gets the chance to inter-
pret the other because they find things of them rather than experiencing
them in lived durée, like it would happen in a face-to-face interaction.
This would also explain why the same respondent mentions that the
information from Facebook is more scarce (due to the lack of experienced
togetherness), yet easier to interpret for a synthetic, but reductionist
impression of the other (due to the lack of flow). At the same time, the
issue of having more time to put it together, as well as the lack of fluidity,
is also related to the written form of the interaction. Although Facebook
has a function that allows a video and audio call, the interviewees associ-
ate Facebook interactions with a written format. None of the respondents
has mentioned anything about the audio/video call function of Facebook.
Furthermore, in the fragment I quoted in the paragraph before, the user
makes a distinction between Facebook and Skype, by associating Facebook
with written content and Skype with visual and spoken interaction.
This written character that Facebook has established for itself is directly
linked to the unfolding of the interaction. On the one hand, the pace is
different, even in synchronous interactions, than face to face. On the
other hand, everything is recorded and can be accessed at all times. Thus,
instead of a flow, the result is an accumulation. Access to the past is not
mediated through memory, selective gazes, and first-hand experiences,
but gained directly through archives. As a consequence, the experience of
time is transposed in a spatial and timeless manner. The answer to the
question of what happened at a certain time is to scroll down and look.
Moreover, one limit users’ mention about Facebook interaction, which
is partially overcome by audio and video calling, is the embodied experi-
ence of the other. If the things which happen in an interaction are, for
one participant, indicators of the inner life of the other, individuals who
have been socialized in interactions where the other was present in their
world within reach have learned to interpret indicators from the informa-
tion they received sensorially. As a result, an interaction where the inflec-
tions in the other’s voice, the tone, their look, their smile, and their
66  G.-I. Ivana

gestures are missing is very difficult for many. For instance, one inter-
viewee explains:

Because it is not the same talking to a person and having a chat. I don’t
know if you know this, but only 10% of our interaction is what we actually
say. 70% is body language and 20% is the way we say things. So, on
Facebook you only have that 10%. (SB22)

From this point of view, this affirmation is very similar to the one of
the person above who believes Skype is more suitable for long-distance
interactions. But one of the key elements behind this access to the other
and gathering as many indicators as possible in order to read them is
the construction of togetherness, which ultimately lies in interconnect-
edness of experience, in the reshaping of one’s flow of lived durée by the
influence of the other. Above, SB2 was saying it makes no sense to
comfort someone with a virtual hug. Another interviewee has similar
concerns:

But then again, I had someone in my class, for example, in high school,
who would be like posting these posts about being really sad and writing to
their cousin who just died, or something, and this is really serious and it
makes me feel uncomfortable, because I would like to help them and be
there for them, but when they go and post it on Facebook it’s taking some-
thing really personal which you should discuss with your closest ones and
making it like an unimportant event.(…) I would never go and comment
because I wouldn’t know what to say. I couldn’t really support them by
using Facebook. It would be a face to face conversation. (SB34)

The lack of reality of these interactions lies in the incapacity to have an

impact on the lived experience of the other or, in other words, the inca-
pacity to construct a common micro-world within reach in which our
here’s and now’s converge, making us accessible to each other. Users have
not been prepared in their socialization to read another based solely on
written information, let alone to reshape the lived experience of another
with the tools of interacting offered by Facebook. In that sense, the
exchange of information happening through Facebook communication
is interpreted by some of the users as unreal interaction, even if it meets
   Facebook and Real Life    67

the conditions of an interaction. In the quotation above, the respondent

is talking about her feeling of uselessness as a result of the insurmount-
able out-of-reach status of the other. He/she is in a there and then where
the subject cannot have any impact on their experience. There is no inter-
connectedness, and where there is no interconnectedness, there is no real
experience of each other. In the example above, the interviewee felt the
original public post invited an “with me” rather than “of me” approach,
and this framework made her acutely aware of the impossibility of actu-
ally engaging in a significant flow shared with the author of the post.
However, when feelings are triggered, when certain ways of attributing
meaning are challenged and reshaped, so when that interconnectedness
of experiences occurs, the common micro-world within reach may be
lived as real. This appears in the discourses of the users with whom I have
discussed not explicitly, but through the disappearance of the Facebook
real-life separation. Instead, the continuity of their narrative gained pri-
ority over the setting of the exchange.
There is, nevertheless, an amendment to this interpretation of reality.
It is, just like interpretations of face-to-face interactions, dynamic and
subject to shifts. An interviewee who did not agree to being recorded and
whose story I am reconstructing on the basis of written notes told me she
met a guy at a party and they talked briefly. Afterwards, they started chat-
ting on Facebook for hours over the course of a few weeks. She thought
she was very in love. Yet, when they met face to face again, she said: “He
was so annoying! I couldn’t stand him! I couldn’t stand being in the same
room as him! I didn’t know him and I had just gave him qualities that I
would have liked and imagined he was like that. So Facebook is not real
at all!” (SB39).
So, in this case, despite having had a shared lived experience with the
other, she qualifies it as unreal. However, we must note that at the time
when those interactions occurred and for as long as their initial interpre-
tation was considered valid, those experiences were very much real life.
Hence, she talks about having been in love as a consequence of the long
conversations which have given her a sense of togetherness. During their
conversations, her world within reach must have included him since he
was having an impact on her experience as lived durée. Yet, when meeting
him again, she had access to additional indicators in order to read him
68  G.-I. Ivana

and these indicators told her a different story than the written interaction
had told. Since it was based on more information and an undeniable
presence in the same world within reach, this interpretation gained prev-
alence over the way in which meaning was attributed based on the writ-
ten interaction. As she mentions, the indicators she could grasp over
Facebook were not enough to offer a holistic image of the other (Baker
2008, quoted by Baym 2010), but in the absence of any other readable
input, she constructed an ungrounded fiction in the frame of which she
understood the interactions. In the face-to-face interaction, she got access
to indicators according to which she could fill in the gaps. So, when she
experienced him in the same physical here and now, her interpretation of
him changed. Furthermore, she retrospectively reconsidered her initial
reading of the Facebook interaction as well. Just as in face-to-face interac-
tions new information can deconstruct an entire previous understanding
of a situation or impression of a person, new inputs are even easier to be
acquired and to function the same way when going from online to offline.
So, previous events will be brought back into memory (or looked at by
scrolling the chat tab on Facebook) and reinterpreted in light of new
indicators and new evaluations of the other. The discrepancy between
what is taken out of the face-to-face interaction and the understanding
that had been generated through Facebook chatting made the respondent
dismiss the common micro-world within reach created in online com-
munication as an illusion, since it had given her a limited (and suscepti-
ble to distortions) experience of the other. From this point of view, even
the interconnectedness in that past lived experience is questioned. The
ways in which the other has influenced her experience might have not
even anything else but her own interpretations of scarce clues that she
imagined to be indicators of something they were not.
Another issue that needs to be approached in the discussion about
interacting as experiencing the other and exchanges of information as
knowing of the other is interactions through feedback in public posts. If
the posts are, although public, particularly directed at someone or if the
author hints to an experience of togetherness with someone, that is a
tentative construction of an interaction and a common here and now. In
this case, feedback (in the form of likes and especially comments) is con-
tributing to the construction of within reachness. It is a confirmation that
   Facebook and Real Life    69

the author’s message has had an impact. On the other hand, if the mes-
sage was not particularly aimed at someone, it can only be meant to
construct an imaginary about the author’s separate world within reach. In
that case, likes and comments are the actual beginning of the interaction,
since they are the first contents sent with an identified recipient in mind.
They can either be an attempt at establishing togetherness or a signal that
the information launched publicly has been received and will be used,
one way or another, in the future assessments of the author.
The aim of this section has been to underline the ways in which
interaction on Facebook is different than other interactions and to jus-
tify the decision of analyzing it as a separate category. Thus, up to now
my focus has been on mediatization, or, in other words, on the disrup-
tions occurring especially between Facebook and face-to-face interac-
tions or, more generally, exchanges of information. However, these
interactions and exchanges of information do not happen spontane-
ously and unconnected with anything else. On the contrary, they are
often continuations of face-­to-­face interactions or various manifesta-
tions of previous ties. They are linked to the strength of ties, to the ways
in which the other has already been read, to objective and subjective
meaning contexts, to social constructions of habits, expectations, roles,
and so on. At the same time, through new experiences of interconnect-
edness, through new accumulations in stocks of impressions, through
negotiations of meanings and tie strength, Facebook exchanges also
contribute to the relational universe that they were born of. So, besides
mediatization, we are equally witnessing mediation. That is to say an
analysis of Facebook exchanges needs to take into account the continu-
ities with the offline. This is also the theme I will focus on in the follow-
ing chapters.

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 4
Meaning Construction in Overviewing:
“It Was Like Catching Up, But Without
Talking”

As have seen in Chap. 3, unaddressed public posts tend to favor know-

ing of the other over experiencing the other in lived durée. Access is
gained to segments of the other’s world within reach, but no common
here and now emerges between the sender and the receiver. However,
the tie between the sender and the receiver is, as users point out, an
important part of how the content displayed will be read. Yet, first of
all, it is an important part of the decision about whether it will be read
at all. One of the first things that are visible from the interviews is the
discrepancy between a focus on the posts of close friends and the posts
of ties that are weaker. The following two quotations illustrate the two
approaches:

Also, I disabled the notifications of the majority of my friends. I mean I

don’t receive notifications from most of the people, because I sometimes
for me it’s a bit silly posting kittens, children, kittens. I mean, I have noth-
ing against it, but again, with the majority of my friends, I am not close
friends. I mean I met them in university in the country A or in country B
or in country C, we are not close friends and I don’t think that… Firstly,
it’s not very interesting for me to look at their personal private life and
secondly, maybe I am not supposed to look at it. So I only left the news

© The Author(s) 2018 73

G.-I. Ivana, Social Ties in Online Networking, Palgrave Studies in
Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71595-7_4
74  G.-I. Ivana

feed for some people, like close friends and also like, news agencies, maga-
zines, blogs. (SB12)
Ok, so let’s say if they are close friends, maybe I check them, maybe I
don’t and if they’re not that close, I don’t know why, but with some people
you feel like, even if you don’t really talk to them… It’s like ha, ha, I am
looking at your private stuff and you don’t know or maybe you are not
aware (laughs). (…) The fact that it’s someone you don’t really talk to that
much makes you want to see what they are doing. I don’t know why.
(SB15)

The former interviewee is only interested in those with whom he feels

he has a connection, while the latter focuses on those with whom he does
not have a strong bond. There is a clear difference in levels of interest for
weak ties between the two, but what is more interesting is the communal-
ity in the two quotations. Namely, both of them note the assumed expec-
tation of the other about who should see the content: “maybe I am not
supposed to look” and “I am looking at your private stuff and you are not
aware”. They have different positions about how to deal with this prob-
lem, but they both get a sense of clandestinity about reading/looking at/
listening to contents published by weak ties. I will analyze the issue of
clandestinity in more detail at the end of this chapter. Right now, what I
believe is important to keep in mind is that there is an assumption that
even that which is public and not addressed is, in fact, addressed implic-
itly to certain people, namely the ones who have a close link with the
author. At the same time, an issue which is visible here and which is
recurrent throughout the interviews is normativity. More specifically, the
norms associated with various types and strengths of ties are the main
concern of interviewees. The words of SB12 about his disinterest in weak
ties point to a level of normativity, as he mentions that such disinterest is
actually legitimate for people who one does not know too well. SB15’s
interest in weak ties alludes to the same normativity, as he believes the tie
itself does not legitimate the curiosity; he regards his overviewing is an act
of mildly breaking a social norm.
Some of the subjects are, however, less discriminate in their interest.
When asked whether he browses for profiles of his ties, one respondent
says:
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    75

Nooooo, because I get seriously lost. I won’t get out of there, because I
really have this tendency./ INT: And is it aimed more at certain people or
can it be anyone?/ SB29: No, it can be anyone. Once I’m in, I’ll just go
through their whole Facebook. I mean it./ INT: And are you looking for
anything in particular?/ SB29: No. Any information. I just assimilate a lot
of information. (SB29—translated from Romanian)

This is an example of a user whose curiosity extends to strong and weak

ties alike and who is interested in knowing as much as possible about any
of his contacts. Nevertheless, his understandings about those he gathers
information about and the interpretations of the information itself will
vary. In the following pages, I will explore this variation.

 eaning Construction for Public Posts

M
by Close Ties
As for the actual content others post, interviewees insist content posted
by close friends is interpreted differently than the one posted by average
contacts within the network. A 25-year-old woman I interviewed after
work at her office job in Barcelona talked about this topic fairly at length.
Namely, she explained many of her friends and former university mates
posted photos which were revealing their bodies. She found that prob-
lematic not because she would have a negative evaluation of those people
as a result of seeing those pictures; she makes it very clear her bond with
them is strong enough not to depend on such evaluations. However, she
fears they will get negatively evaluated by others who are not as close to
them. Negative assessments, she highlights, are probable not necessarily
in situations of the physical exposure itself (a group photo at the beach
would be ok), but when exposure is actively and transparently pursued
(selfies or photos in front of a mirror).
There are a series of interesting aspects to discuss regarding this inter-
viewee’s point of view, such as the preference for photos depicting experi-
ences over physical self-disclosure. This is connected with the issue I have
analyzed in the previous chapter about the sharing of content as a way of
constructing a common world within reach as opposed to encouraging
76  G.-I. Ivana

the other to produce an imaginary about your here and now which for
them is out of reach (but which will trigger certain typifications).
However, now I will focus on her explanation about not minding some-
thing that in principle bothers her, only because the authors are her
friends. The formulation she uses, “they are still my friends”, refers to the
fact that an impression has already been constructed with respect to those
people, according to their impact on the subject’s life, through what they
lived together and through how the other has shaped her experiences. She
also has a generic knowledge about a type of people who post selfies and
photos of themselves in bikinis. Yet, the persons in question will not fall
into this category, because this would be a general typification used as a
hint for making sense of the other in the absence of more personalized
indicators. Here, more personalized and varied indicators exist already
and exceed the knowledge derived from a type, so that typification does
not matter anymore.
Another interviewee, a boy in his early 20s, agrees. When asked about
whether he feels one’s Facebook activity guides him in making sense of
that person, he mentions this is sometimes the case, but not always:

But I have a really good friend, she is in country A now, and she really loves
shopping. If I saw her profile, I would have had a bad impression about her,
but I know her and we talk a lot, we have great chemistry when we meet,
so that doesn’t matter anymore. (SB2)

This girl is already meaningful to my interviewee according to the

impact she has had on his lived experience. He thus constructs their con-
nection as a quite strong tie, so he does not need to interpret her Facebook
posts. However, the interviewee in the first example above expresses her
concern over how those posts would be interpreted by others, who do not
find themselves closely tied with the poster of the bikini pictures. She is
worried just as she typifies some of her contacts according to ideal types
more than reading them through the lens of shared experience and inter-
connectedness (as limited or extended as it might be), others will also
typify her friend the same way. Thus, she disagrees with her friend’s prac-
tice, not because it changes her tie with her friend, but she expects it to
change the tie her friend has with others. In SB2’s example, the profile is
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    77

also a collection of information that can be used for fitting the other in
an ideal type, but not always accurately. Also, since these are public posts,
at least formally not directed to anyone in particular, they are by design
only contributing to an imaginary about the world within reach of the
other rather than to the construction of a common here and now. Yet, in
the case of close ties, that imaginary about the other’s world within reach,
just like the understanding, emotions, and bond of the other person, will
also be shaped by information coming from other sources than what is
shared in Facebook. When asked about whether she interprets the posts
she sees on Facebook (the public ones, not those addressed to her) as
indicators of what the author of the post might be going through at a
certain point, one respondent answered:

Yes. With close people, because with others, I don’t know why they are
posting that, but when it is about close friends, yes I can make that deduc-
tion. (SB5)

Another user emphasizes:

Yes, but I don’t think it is so much about the indicators within the content,
it’s just that you know the person a little, so from a starting point which is
what I know of them and what they publish, I think you have the elements
to consider what is going on, or at least you have your hypotheses. (SB11)

These are just two out of countless examples where Facebook users talk
about the ways of attributing meaning to the other while showing the
actual presence of the other or the interaction (as specifically directed
content) is not necessary for subjective understandings to emerge. In the
two quotations above, the interpreter and the interpreted are not physi-
cally copresent and they are not addressing each other. They are in con-
texts I have described in the previous chapter as knowing of one another.
Thus, in terms of Schütz’s distinction between those who are present in
one’s world within reach, on the one hand, and those who are absent and
who we only know of, on the other, the exchanges of information in the
Facebook public wall fall into the second category. They are similar to
hearing a story about a third person. Yet the attribution of meaning can
78  G.-I. Ivana

be subjective, because the impression about the other may be constituted

according to the general interpretative frame of how the user experiences
the tie with the author of the post. In turn, that frame emerged from
previous concrete situations lived with the other (as it is the case in the
quotations above), rather than from an ideal type. In this case, meaning
is built upon what we know of a certain him/her, and how we feel about
that person in light of a multifaceted bond, not on cold detached infor-
mation about people like him/her. In the two fragments above, the inter-
viewees use their own past experiences of togetherness, as well as the stock
of knowledge they have of the other, in order to construct an imaginary
about what the other’s lived experience must have been and to derive an
understanding starting from there. Both of them mention that they need
a close relationship with the other to have this subjective reading despite
their absence from the world within reach.
Thus, when the tie is close, the other has already become meaningful
in certain (quite particularized) ways before entering the exchange on
Facebook; he/she is already meaningful for the subject mainly in terms of
how they impacted each other’s’ lives and of their shared experiences.
That produces a round impression cumulating emotions, reflections,
memories, and expectations which in quotidian language is referred to as
“knowing someone” with whom a strong bond is shared. So, when the tie
is close enough, the subject feels he/she knows the other, not people like
the other, but that precise person. That is the reason why the interviewees
above state if they have a close relation with the author of the post, they
can interpret the post more accurately. At the same time, they might also
have more than an understanding of the other according to the unique
impact he/she had on the subject. They might also have concrete knowl-
edge about a particular course of events. They might already have an
imaginary of what the other might be living when they are apart, which
is typically constructed largely through exchanges happening outside of
Facebook. In that case, the personalized impression of the other that
comes from the close tie, coupled with an existing imaginary about his/
her world within reach, grounded on previous information, will form a
certain construction of meaning, to which the contents shared on
Facebook are only an addition, a piece of a puzzle. Above, we have seen
that this addition is not substituting or even completing the impression
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    79

based on interconnectedness. Yet, it is relevant for making the imaginary

about the other’s world within reach dynamic. Thus, instead of identify-
ing, categorizing, or evaluating the other, in the case of close bonds,
Facebook exchanges of information serve for putting together a narrative.
As a consequence, the other will also be imagined in movement and,
thus, in his/her unfolding experience. It is similar to the principle of ani-
mating cartoons. When the subject has access to more captures from a
flow of the other’s experience, he/she is able to reconstitute that flow with
approximation. One interviewee explains this using an example about
the ups and downs of her romantic relationship and how she shares these
situations with her close friends who live in a different country:

The more in love and enthusiastic I am, the more I post about romance, for
instance. The angrier I am because maybe we had a fight 5 minutes before,
the more I post things like men are pigs. And statuses, yes, when I am upset
I post it as a status, you know? And probably my best friend (who I have
just told about him) will understand, and he will understand because he
feels in the wrong. (…) Maybe I don’t have time to be on the phone with
my best friend for half an hour daily, so then she sees what happened from
my posts. Many times, she called or messaged me asking “Hey, what hap-
pened? I saw that on your profile… Did you break up again?” (SB7—
translated from Romanian)

Here, the interviewee insists she expects her best friend to understand
her posts because she had already told her friend an entire story before
that post. So, the information contained by the post would represent for
the friend not so much something according to which to make sense of
the author of the post, but a new sequence in a plot. That is why the
Facebook public post becomes part of an imaginary about a dynamic
world within reach in which the subject’s close tie must be living. In other
words, it favors a very particular orientation, where, besides impersonal
typification of others in categories of diverse levels of generality, there is
also a form of flow. This imaginary about the other’s world within reach
in a dynamic form is still in the “of me” rather than “with me” mode of
interpretation, but it is “of me” as more than an exponent of a type. This
“of me” recreates flows and imagines experiences, because it is “of me”
80  G.-I. Ivana

with whom you share a bond, “of me” who you already know well and
care about, and “of me” of whose life you are a part. The same phenom-
enon, but from the perspective of the other participant, is described by
another interviewee when he is asked about examples of overexposure on
Facebook. In this context he mentions women who publicly write about
their boyfriends leaving them, or saying they are sad without explaining
why, which bothers him even more. In such situations, he explains he
would not react in any way, unless they were close friends; then he would
send them a private message.
In other words, if the tie with the poster is weak, the interviewee will
read the content as a means of seeking attention and he will find it irritat-
ing, whereas if he has a strong tie with the author, the message will be
interpreted as serious enough to deserve a private message as a response.
Like in the case of the interviewees who discarded the information they
received through Facebook about their friends in a bikini or being overly
concerned with shopping, this user would also read his close ties accord-
ing to other criteria, namely evaluations drawn from previous experience
with the other, an experience in which the other has made an impression
and which serves as the ground for new meaning construction. Certain
motivations or meanings are read as uncharacteristic to that person and,
often unreflectively, ruled out of the interpretative process or are tolerated
in light of other considerations about him/her. Then, the content from
Facebook is just an update on the changes in the other’s world within
reach, changes of which the interviewee becomes aware, as the result of
the posting. An important element here is, once again, the normativity
which shapes informal ties, and especially strong ones. It is expected of
someone’s behavior, or on Facebook, their posts, not to be under constant
scrutiny by their close friends, as the unwritten social rule is that friends
do not engage in detailed evaluations resulting in categorizations of each
other into ideal types. Given Facebook’s relational fabric, it follows that it
is only acceptable for contents posted by close friends will be meaningful
within the frame of the bond, with the norms it implies. In this respect,
reconstructing events of a friend’s life when they are apart, “catching up”,
“learning what’s going on”, or in other words recreating flow, is not only
socially acceptable, but also desirable.
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    81

However, since the public message is not specifically addressed, very

often no actual social interaction is initiated. Thus, since the content is
not regarded as aimed at the one who happens to read it, the dynamic
aspects of the life of the author of the post have little bearing on the bond
with the receiver of the post. The interpreter and his tie with the poster of
the content was not under negotiation in any of the previous quotations
talking about strong ties and Facebook posts. In the case of the last inter-
viewee, the actual bond of the interpreted with the interpreter entered in
the scenario only when the subject decides how he should react about the
situation his close friend is going through, but not in the actual reading
of the content his friend shared.
Furthermore, close ties can be part of the decision about what some-
one posts publicly or they can be accomplices to a plan. One interviewee
gives an example in this sense:

With my best friends, when I see what they post, I am never surprised,
because I know what they like or who they want to impress. And they also
know about me. For instance, once some friends posted pictures with me
and I didn’t want a guy I liked to know where I was that weekend because
I wanted to keep him guessing, so I told my friends: ‘Look, you can tag
each other if you want, but don’t tag me because I don’t want him to see
this ́. So then they posted the pictures and commented, but they didn’t tag
me and I didn’t comment and they all knew what was going on. With other
friends, if we do not talk all the time, I don’t care about a song or an article
they post, because I know their style anyway. But if it seems to be some-
thing personal or a hidden meaning and I get curious, I have a chat with
them in private to catch up. (SB26)

In this case, that which appears publicly had already been discussed
with close ties, so they will not need to construct an imaginary of the
poster’s world within reach, because they were in the same here and now.
This means for them the information of the post will have a very clear
interpretation. The only way in which that content can still be novel to
them is reading it through a different lens. Namely, the friend can take an
outsider perspective and try to ignore the background information to
construct an estimation of how that post might be understood by some-
one who sees it without knowing other details.
82  G.-I. Ivana

There are, however, situations where the public information from

Facebook is interpreted neither as a part of the dynamic of the other’s
experience and his/her moving world within reach, nor as a ground for
evaluation.
For instance, in the excerpt below, information which is directly rele-
vant for the tie is left aside only because it is gathered online as opposed
to taken out of a shared experience. The respondent says:

2 years ago I fell in love with this guy and he was really different from me
because I like to be with one person and see each other and chat and be
friends at the same time when you are dating the person, and he would be
like more easygoing and his approach towards this would be very different.
So, if I started following him on Facebook, I am sure I would see many
pictures that I didn’t really like, but it’s ok, because it’s just his way of doing
things. This would disappoint me a lot, but I think it is difficult, because it
is the same with text messages, that you can’t really… it’s not the same as
being face to face and most of the time you should try to calm down and if
you have any doubts about something, just go and ask because it’s easy to
misunderstand. (SB34)

In her explanation, the interviewee shows she doubts the information

she gets from Facebook because, in the absence of lived experience
together, the reconstitution of the other’s experience apart might be
faulted by the lack of details. So, the possible grounds for failed expecta-
tions would not be actions occurring on Facebook, but actions that hap-
pened in an inaccessible here and now and that would only be put
together through information from Facebook. Then, the subject is more
reserved in reshaping her impression of the other on the basis of imagined
plots about what is not within her reach. Yet, despite being wary of mis-
understandings, she also acknowledges the potential of public Facebook
information to have an influence (in this case disappointment) on how
she saw a close tie in relation to her, if that which was posted came against
her prior sense of interconnectedness with the author of the posts. While
this example is not precisely a close bond and the way in which content
is interpreted is somewhat different, I am invoking it here especially with
respect to bond questioning and how it may link with Facebook
information.
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    83

At the same time, as I have mentioned before, ties differ in terms of

strength, but also in terms of types. Not all close ties are friendships. As
we have seen, Facebook users often feel strongly linked to (former/possi-
ble future) romantic partners, or to people with whom they have had
major (irreconcilable) conflicts. One respondent exemplifies this by talk-
ing about how he has put his current girlfriend in a Facebook group of
close friends where she is the only member. The reason for doing so is to
keep track of everything she likes and comments. He concludes by saying
he spies on her.
This user has made particular settings in order to effortlessly monitor
his girlfriend. In my understanding of his words, his motivation for doing
so is gaining information about the situations that do not occur in their
common here and now, but during the times when they are apart.
Moreover, it is a way of reconstructing the experiences she might have
had and might not want to share with him. The information he gets from
this source can potentially change his impression of her only if some of
the things he learns will contradict his interpretation of the bond on
which that impression is based. He would not see her differently if he
discovered she likes a different style of music, but he would re-evaluate
her if his view of her was based on how considerate she has always been
to him and he reads a post where she publicly talks about something he
had confessed to her. In a strong tie, unless the new information attacks
the very foundation of the bond of the other, it will not be relevant.
From another perspective, unlike in the cases where the close ties were
friends of the user, here the interviewee is not interested in getting infor-
mation to continue a plot that had started in a previous interaction,
because the tie is close enough that the imaginary about the partner’s
experience would not need to be fed with public Facebook posts, but
with depictions of that experience by the partner in direct interaction. So,
here is sought the reconstitution of an alternative course of events lived
by the partner.

Maybe you don’t love somebody, but you have the need to know what he
or she is doing. It’s an obsession, it’s like when you eat you think oh, I have
to check it. It’s not because I am interested, it is because of habit and I am
worried about this. If you do that without even liking the person, when
84  G.-I. Ivana

you really love someone, it can become very bad. (…) Sometimes, when I
have an ex-girlfriend I want to check on, I see who she is with. I check the
pictures, the comments, who made the comments, then I check the profile
of the person who made the comment. I am thinking of leaving Facebook
because of this, because when I have some free time, I might waste it doing
something like that. (SB38)

In this case, the subject talks about romantic interests which, irrespec-
tive of whether they are maintained or they fade away, favor a close moni-
toring of the other on Facebook. The tie is close enough for the other to
have already been interpreted based on past lived experience. So, this is
an example of monitoring with the defined purpose of grasping as much
as possible from what is shared publicly in order to reconstruct the
dynamic of the other’s world within reach and, ultimately, the course of
the other’s experience. She wants to know what her ex-girlfriend had been
doing despite not spending time in the same here and now and despite
not communicating enough to construct an imaginary plot about the
other’s here and now. In this sense, the mechanism of meaning construc-
tion is not very different from the above examples of interpreting posts
from close friends. However, unlike in the case of close friends where the
imaginary of the other’s experience is built to an important extent on the
information gathered from other sources that the public posts, in this
case it is only the public posts. Thus, the effort of approximating the right
plot is greater. Furthermore, in the case of close ties with friends, none of
the interviewees mentioned going to such great lengths as checking who
comments on the friends’ posts and browsing for the profiles of the com-
menters to reconstruct the experience of their friends. Yet, this happens
because the interviewee knows that if she is to reconstruct daily experi-
ences of her ex-girlfriend, she needs to do so relationally. She also bases
her reconstitution on certain institutionalizations of interactions that
already exist on Facebook and that I will approach later. For now, if we
are to put it briefly, let us say she knows it is likely that those who post
comments have a close tie with her object of interest and it is also likely
that the tie has emerged in shared experiences. Thus, this scrutiny into the
details of Facebook posts appears to be a good way (if not the only sustainable
one) of receiving news about another without interacting with them. This
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    85

characteristic makes Facebook very important in certain relational sce-

narios, like conflicts and tensions.
The situation of conflict between friends is similar to the situation of
ended romantic relations, because the starting point is in the same lack of
contact and in the same limitations of imagining someone’s experience
and dynamic world within reach without being in touch with them,
exclusively on the basis of public messages:

We were, during high school and in the first year at the university, a group
of girls who did everything together. And at a certain point, some of us
lived together and things started to deteriorate. We started to argue. So
eventually the group of 7 split in small groups. I am not speaking to 3 of
them at all, with some I am still good friend, but they are not friends with
each other. But sometimes I like to look. For instance, one of them has
been chubby before and she has lost a lot of weight. I love to take a look
and see what she looks like now. They are the ones I search for and I
wouldn’t want them to know I looked and they probably do the same thing
with me. (SB7—translated from Romanian)

However, comparing this statement with the affirmations about inter-

preting the information posted by close friends, romantic partners, and
ex-partners, in the case of conflicts the interest for actually reconstructing
the experience of the other is weaker. His/her here and now, what he/she
did, with whom, and how it unfolded are not deduced in great detail. A
general view of the other’s life and the changes from the last time the
interpreter and the interpreted shared an experience are the main focus.
So, to summarize the section on public posts published by strong ties,
I believe it is important to point out that interviewees rarely mentioned
evaluations of their strong ties based on information they got through
public Facebook content. Moreover, some of them insisted that due to
the strength of the tie, this does not constitute a criterion for assessment.
The situations where public information from Facebook reshaped the
interpretation of a close tie were when the information was read as hav-
ing direct repercussions on the tie itself. Secondly, those who are closely
tied with the author of posts will find it easier to read the input they get
in a way they feel confident is similar to what the poster had in mind.
86  G.-I. Ivana

Thirdly, they interpret public content in light of knowledge obtained

from alternative sources about the other and/or a given situation. When
the author of the content is not in the same world within reach as his
strong ties, the post will be used to complete an imaginary about the
author’s experience and the dynamics of his/her world within reach.
When the author and the contacts with whom he/she has a close rela-
tionship have a common world within reach, the public display may be
a result of previous social interactions between them. If the tie is a
romantic relationship, the information that is sought in Facebook pub-
lic posts doubles, rather than continues, the other’s depictions of his/her
separate experience. If the tie is an ended or conflictual relationship, the
reconstitution of the others experience does not benefit from a ground
of previous information and is mostly done on the basis of information
from the profile. In the case of close ties marked by conflict, the inter-
pretation of public posts is not detailed enough to actually recreate the
other’s experience, but follows only major changes happening in the
other life. Nevertheless, not all of these ties are of the same closeness and
as a general rule I believe it can be said that the stronger the bond, the
more one is interested in reconstructing the other’s separate lived experi-
ence in imagination (whether he/she only has the means of public
Facebook information or many other sources at his/her disposal) than to
generate new impressions.

 eaning Construction for Public Posts

M
by Weak Ties
In this section, I will continue the discussion about public unaddressed
posts, but I will focus on their interpretation by weak ties, which I regard
as the core of the flowing web of exchanges occurring on Facebook.
Despite my formulation of this as a unitary topic, we have to keep in
mind, on the one hand, the lack of a clear-cut distinction between strong
and weak ties (they both result from fluid experiences and interpretative
processes) and on the other hand the variety of modes in which weak ties
exist. Thus, the purpose is not to generate a one-size-fits-all explanation,
but to explore the ways different understandings develop about the other
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    87

and his/her in relation to the subject. In order to do so, I will make some
distinctions between weak ties, namely: weak ties from one’s past (old
colleagues, neighbors, people with whom contact has been lost for a
period of time and re-found on Facebook), new ties (people one has just
met and added on Facebook), and weak quotidian ties (people whom one
meets occasionally, but with whom they have yet to become closely con-
nected). These categories are very similar to the ones proposed by Hiller
and Franz (2004), in the context of discussing the uses of the internet in
diaspora. I will begin with the discussion about old ties.

Overviewing Old Ties

I remember from the beginning I looked for old class mates, by names, by
nicknames. I sometimes still search for them, by town or by high-school
also, because many of them got married and changed their names. (…) I
look for their photos, because it is faster. I don’t want to waste time finding
out too much, just some photos, some comments and that’s all. I just like
to know some things about people I haven’t kept in touch with, what they
do, where they are (…) family events, if they got married, if they had kids.
(SB8—translated from Romanian)

This is just one example of a user talking about having old ties in their
network, but similar statements were made by most Facebookers with
whom I talked. Yet, these are weak ties because even if they were read
according to past interconnectedness with the subject, they are even more
strongly typified according to an objective category: in these cases, having
attended the same school as the subject. As a consequence, the interview-
ees describe them not according to certain shared experiences or interac-
tions that had an impact on them, but according to this generic quality.
Furthermore, in the first excerpt, the user emphasizes the old schoolmates
are people she has not seen in ten years and she places them in the same
category with people you rarely meet, in other words, those who are not
a central presence in one’s relational universe. The second person also
highlights that she tends to take a quick look over photos, because her
curiosity is limited to finding out general information about whether
they got married or about their job. But, as general as this interest might
88  G.-I. Ivana

be, it is present, since she explains she is interested in finding out whether
they got married or had children and what their current cities were. These
interests are recurrent in many of the interviews. To illustrate, I will cite
another user who says the following:

I wanted to see what kind of adult people they had become. How they looked
like, whether they were sort of having families, whether they settled them-
selves and they’re happy (smiles), how they actually evolved in life. (SB4)

I believe there are two important aspects in the exploration of how pub-

lic displays from old colleagues are interpreted. It must be said these are
people together with whom the subjects have spent significant amounts
of time in the past and with whom they shared many experiences. So, we
can expect the subject to have at least a schematic image about almost all
of them (especially the ones he/she looks for). So, from one point of view,
the interpretation of Facebook public information would be as an update
of that old impression. In the case of strong ties respondents often said
Facebook public information does not constitute a criterion for typifying
the other, because he/she has already been left a nuanced and vivid impres-
sion on the subject according to past lived experience together. However,
in the case of old contacts, even if the initial impression had been very
potent and based on strong interconnectedness between the subject and
the other, that impression is still not as unquestionable as with current
close ties. One of the interviewees illustrates this with an example:

A colleague from secondary school, who, poor guy, was one of the… He
barely passed his evaluations every year and I am talking about secondary
school here. And, you know, at the end you leave with a certain opinion
about each of them. Anyway, I went to a different high school, we didn’t
keep in touch. Finally, I added him on Facebook and saw how he has
changed. It’s unbelievable. He posts really cool music, only rock… I really
think he changed. And the statuses or the comments to the pictures… he
is funny, he makes jokes with subtext, very cool! And he also looks great!
(SB7—translated from Romanian)

In this case, she makes a detailed description of how her impression of

her old classmate changed through the other’s Facebook public posts. He
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    89

had never been a close tie to her, so her initial impression was mainly
developed from an ideal type, rather than from interconnectedness, but
it was nevertheless a well-cemented typification. Yet, as a result of the
content he posted, he re-evaluated him and placed him in a different box.
However, in the case of the subjects above, who said they were inter-
ested in how the other turned up to be, in what he/she did in life, there
is one other aspect than the updating of an old typification. Namely, it is
a way of understanding the social world at a structural level by identify-
ing patterns of life courses unfolding in correlation with the typifications
of individuals. The old colleague is already typified and that typification
is not always negotiated or changed. When there is no re-evaluation,
what is of interest is, like in the case of posts from strong ties, what hap-
pened to them. Yet, since here the ties are weaker, the other is typified
more in terms of ideal types, rather than read through meaningful shared
experience. In turn that allows for the potential of developing a life course
pattern for people like them. Allow me to clarify this idea starting from
another interview fragment:

It was a former colleague of mine from primary school, she was a fabulous
student, one of the best in our group and also a great girl, I mean I’ve
always thought highly of her. (…) Somehow we got to be friends on
Facebook. I hadn’t seen her in 7 or 8 years.(…) She probably invited me
and when I went on her profile I was very surprised to see how she ended
up. I mean she has a very ostentatious look, heavy make-up and tight
clothes and listens to a certain type of music that I wouldn’t expect her to
listen to, like music I would consider of bad quality, like stuff that teenagers
or kids listened to in mid 90’s and I had this idea that you get over that
stage at some point in your life and apparently she hasn’t gotten over it.
And what else… Apparently she is dating a guy with no higher education.
(SB3)

In this case, the interviewee maintains the old typification about the
other being a great, intelligent girl of whom she thinks very highly, but is
surprised of how the life course of someone with those qualities has
unfolded. On the basis of the initial typification, as well as a general
knowledge about the life course of people like her colleague, she had
constructed a projection about how the other would have grown up,
90  G.-I. Ivana

what her taste in music would be, who she would be dating. Yet, what
happened is that these extensions expanding from the initial typification
and the subject’s life experience with others who had been typified simi-
larly turned out to be inaccurate. So, although the core typification might
still stand (unlike in the case of the former colleague of SB7 who did
poorly in secondary school), the whole chain of deductions made from
that typification is broken. As a consequence, this will raise a question
mark about the connection that the subject was making between the
initial typification and the subsequent ones. In other words, it will con-
tribute to the subject becoming doubtful about connecting, for instance,
one’s intelligence with his/her dating choices. In more general terms, hav-
ing projections about the other’s life course contradicted this way can
change the understanding of the regularities with which life courses
unfold. It will provide examples of individuals achieving things that the
subject thought were against the odds and it may reshape their under-
standing of what it takes to achieve that. Furthermore, the peculiarity of
old ties and especially old schoolmates are that, borrowing from physics,
T0 of the typification occurred in an incipient phase of his/her life and
T1 is very far from T0. From this perspective, the subject gets a pan-
oramic view on the other’s life course. This is, in fact, the most common
key in which posts by old ties are understood and only if very flagrant
contradictions of the initial typification of the person occur, the typifica-
tion itself would also be readdressed. Thus, the two modes of reading
public posts (recreating life courses and re-evaluations of others) are often
present at the same time, but in fluctuating proportions.
Following a thread which was also often present in the discussion
about overviewing strong ties, I believe it is important to point out once
again normativity. The ideal types according to which typifications are
carried out have a series of moral and emotional implications which
reverberate in concrete evaluations. For instance, the notion of “a friend”
does not simply comprise of a set of characteristics which can be captured
reflectively. It includes certain moral expectations, projections about how
the experience of togetherness should feel, and so on. Additionally, differ-
ent types may include features like aggressiveness, snobbery, superficial-
ity, to name just a few attributes. In this case, associating someone with
such types becomes intertwined with particular normative attitudes in
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    91

relation to them. Thus, perhaps even more clearly than in the case of the
strong bond, where new evaluations were not being generated, with
weaker bonds social norms are central, as they function as a compass for
what is significant about the other and in which ways. Another facet of
this normativity refers to circumscribing what is an acceptable reading of
the other in light of the tie involved. So, when the tie is weak enough, the
social rule deems it “normal” and “understandable” to seek for particular
cues or to develop evaluations different than with strong bonds.
At the same time, it is also worth noting that unlike in the case of
strong ties, where the receiver was trying to reconstruct the dynamic
world within reach of the sender, as well as his/her experience within that
world, nothing of that sort is mentioned in the case of old ties. The inter-
viewees do not try to imagine specific events or life experiences of these
contacts. Moreover, the actual tie between the subject and his/her mate is
never brought up. The information exchanged is read mainly in con-
fronting actual events in the other’s life and the subject’s projections
about life course regularities. At the same time, given the abovemen-
tioned panoramic view on life course offered on Facebook, to which is
added a perceived flat starting point (all were students of the same age, in
the same class, although much can be said about background inequali-
ties), estranged mates become a great reference for comparisons of life
trajectories. However, this is not an interpretation that is limited to old
schoolmates. One interviewee puts it in the following words:

Anyway, I would say that there is an issue with authenticity, because there
are so many identical news feeds, like with the same trips, eating, gather-
ings, so I suppose it is just stating that you are not worse than the others
who are posting that. I also have a social life! (SB12)

The issue this subject addresses is the possible motivation why users
would post very similar contents. However, the underlying assumption
here is that users read each other’s posts in terms of comparisons, which
would trigger the need to reaffirm their own life choices. Yet, these com-
parisons are somewhat specific, as opposed to the panoramic life course
evaluations discussed before, where only major events were of interest.
And in all the interviews that touched upon life trajectories, the topic
92  G.-I. Ivana

emerged in discussions about old ties with whom contact had been lost
for a number of years.
At the same time, with the people from one’s past there is a lack of any
recent shared experience and any interconnectedness. There is, also, a
lack of a projected future shared experience or an imagined growing
closer. These elements point, in the end, not to a weak tie, but to an
absence of the tie altogether (if the link from decades ago was not enough
to fuel a connection). That is why, if an overview of life courses is the only
interpretation given to public information on Facebook, once that over-
view has been finished, the interest in the other ends. One subject says:

I have them (note: old acquaintances) in the network. But it’s true that I
am starting to delete them because in the beginning you enjoy it: Hey,
look! and you see their photos, you see them changed, but afterwards it just
wears off (…) I look at their photos, to see them, if they changed a lot
physically, and I also look at their life, because if you look on their profile
you can see perfectly if they live with their lover or not, if they have kids,
because through photos and everything, you can know their life. And you
just look to see what life they have. (SB19—translated from Spanish)

Once the general picture about the other’s life has been completed, the
additional information gathered through new posts becomes irrelevant.
In the case of lifestyle comparisons, interest never fades away, but if only
life trajectories as a whole are at stake, the subject had rather not receive
most public posts which happen on a quotidian scale of magnitude.
An intermediate interpretative process (derived from an intermediate
tie) between the attempt of imaginarily reconstructing the other’s lived
experience and the very general interest in their life trajectory is keeping
a constant moderate interest in the other’s life. For instance, one inter-
viewee affirms:

Well, a friend of mine… When I was an exchange student (note: two to

three years before), I met this girl, I thought she was really cool, she lives in
country A., so we didn’t have much contact afterwards. I mean, if we were
in the same place, I’d definitely be friends with her again, but in these
terms, it’s complicated. I remember a while ago she went to country B. and
she posted some pictures and I was like oh, it’s person X! and I looked at
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    93

her pictures and then I went to her profile and I saw what she is studying
and where, just to get a general view of what she was up to. It was like
catching up, but without talking (laughs). (SB15)

In this case, what the interviewee describes is not a reading of the

other’s public posts as a close friend. He does not try to construct an
imaginary about her actual experience and the dynamics of her here and
now. He had not kept enough contact with her through other channels
to have additional information to use in assembling a plot. He just
wanted, in his own words, a general view of what she was up to, but still
with a higher level of specificity than the interest most users have for
people they have not known anything about for periods longer than three
years. For instance, he was not only looking for major life events, her
family, or her job but also for her pictures from a recent trip. This, I
believe, comes from an awareness of the other’s transformation while they
are not part of our world within reach. The other leads a parallel existence
that will continue to unfold when they are apart. In this case, receiving
some information about the other’s experience, while they are not in the
same here and now as the subject, is a way of keeping up with the changes
in the other and his/her world within reach. For this to be of interest, the
subject needs to interpret the other as someone with whom they are still
connected, even if not very strongly. Thus, to conclude, it follows from
the last quotation, as well as the ones above, that the level of detail in
which the dynamics of the other’s life is relevant is proportional with the
strength of the tie. The stronger the tie, the more detailed image of the
other’s experience while apart will be sought. When the tie is weak and
the other is only typified based on an ideal type, the experience will be
interpreted in a frame of generality rather than specificity.
At the same time, what is interesting to note here is the way in which
relational normativity establishes acceptable online exchanges. In this
case, the intergender friendship seems to come with its own norms. This
is something Felmlee et al. (2012) were analyzing using an experimental
design regarding friendships unfolding in traditional settings.
Furthermore, the topic is not new in the literature (Booth and Hess 1974;
O’Meara 1989; Werking 1997). For the respondent above, the intuitively
grasped norms about intergender friendship have a direct translation in
94  G.-I. Ivana

online behavior which must signal his faithfulness to the pre-established

frame of the bond.

New Acquaintances

Another type of weak ties who have access to one’s public posts and whose
interpretations have certain particularities are the new acquaintances. It is
typically considered and documented through research that the forma-
tion of new ties is favored by the online environment (McKenna et al.
2002; Ellison et al. 2006; Baym 2010). However, in this respect social
networking platforms and Facebook in particular do not closely follow
that pattern. All of the users I interviewed stated they do not have any
contacts they do not know at least indirectly in their networks. They do
have, however, what Baym (2010) calls latent ties. Many mention the fact
that it has become habitual to add people one has recently met to the
network of Facebook contacts. I will provide a few quotations to illustrate
this:

From the beginning I had a large group of friends. I was the administrator
of a Facebook group of lesbians from the city V., so most of the lesbian girls
from our city added me and I felt great, like oh, I am the administrator
(…) I believe it was [a position of power]. (SB38)

When asked about her privacy options, another interviewee responded:

It’s available only for friends. For all 507 of them and I don’t even know
half of them. (…) No, I mean I have met them at least once in my life or
we have had a five minutes’ conversation or we have been in the same con-
text, at an event, but we never shared anything other than that. I don’t even
know why I added them, but I am a lot more selective now. This was hap-
pening two years ago. (SB1)

Thus, as it can be seen in these users’ experiences, it takes very little

connection for someone to qualify for becoming a contact on Facebook.
Yet, as SB1 remarks, the threshold for adding someone has shifted over
the years. As West et al. (2009) have shown, the so-called public realm of
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    95

the Facebook wall does not fall into the classic private-public dichotomy.
Thus, the need the keep the access restrained and manageable enough has
become more and more urgent. Another subject talks about this issue:

I mean I don’t add people that I just meet for a short period of time. If it is
people I am getting to know more, I will add them. But I am trying not to
get too many friends again. Especially now that I am in a new place and I
keep meeting new people I don’t want to add people I will just end up
deleting anyway. (SB2)

Like the interviewee above, SB2 also constructed his habit of adding
on Facebook only certain people based on his past experience with the
issue. The public access to his profile must remain compatible to the level
of publicness of the information he shares. He says he does not want to
have too many friends again, so he is trying to avoid the practice through
which he believes he got in that situation before. That practice had been
adding everyone with whom he had been in the same context and he had
interacted briefly, that which SB1 described as the five-minute conversa-
tion. Thus, that person will not be above the privacy threshold. In this
respect, possibilities for clandestinity are becoming somewhat narrower.
The strategy of both interviewees is to include not necessarily people with
whom they interact more, but particularly people with whom they are
developing a tie (although the two often overlap). Furthermore, SB2
mentions he does not want to end up deleting people anymore, so there
is also a component of projection for the future tie with that person to be
strong enough that he would not need to delete them. This means that,
unlike in the case of people who are added by virtue of a tie in the past,
but with whom the projection of future interconnectedness is very weak,
in the case of new Facebook contacts, the existing tie is the ground for the
projection of the tie in the future. Once having added the new contacts,
the meaning given to the public content the other shares will vary accord-
ing to this projection, as well as the nature of the tie already created. On
the one hand, if the tie is very weak, that information can be used to
typify the other starting from an ideal type. I will provide two slightly
different examples to illustrate this idea. One is referring to new ties in
general, while the other is focused on new ties with romantic potential,
96  G.-I. Ivana

as online communication is increasingly important in pursuing romance

(Rosenfeld and Thomas 2012).

INT: But do you check others profiles and timelines?/ SB23: If I have just
added them, yes./ INT: And what are you interested in?/ SB23: I am inter-
ested in I don’t know what it is called, but on the left side, what they are
studying, what they are working and then the photos./ INT: What about
likes in movies, music?/ SB23: I’ve never been big on movies, but if they list
some literature, I’ll also check that. (SB23—translated from Spanish)

Here, the subject mentions that he would check the public informa-
tion posted by the other when he has just added them. Then, the actual
elements that are of interest are mostly those that can produce a static
typification of the other (their studies, their job, the books they read),
rather than to construct an imaginary about the dynamics or the narra-
tive happening in the other’s life at a particular point. As Ellison et al.
(2014) point out, Facebook interaction constitutes a resource in social
capital formation, and I argue it is precisely this weak tie resourcefulness
which is evaluated and aimed through bondless typifications of the other
according to hints about their structural position.
Another subject goes through a similar meaning attribution process,
and in the fragment below he explains the situation where he is romanti-
cally interested in the new contact:

Oh yeah! Let’s say I might find on Facebook things that make me think
maybe this person is not that attractive, but it…/ INT: Such as?/ SB15:
Oh, I am going to come across as incredibly demanding and a horrible
person, but if she likes music that I think is awful, I might reconsider my
interest in this person. I like lots of different music, but I think there are
signs that might tell you how a person is. (SB15)

As I have mentioned in the chapter on ties, strong ties are to a greater

extent based on an impression constructed in shared experience, while
weaker ones are predominantly typifications based on sets of characteris-
tics, behaviors, and tastes of the other. I have also argued that the typifica-
tions made in weak ties often serve in evaluations for the potential of
stronger ties. This is exactly the train of thought that both SB23 and
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    97

SB15 follow in the quotations above. Thus, when SB15 adds a new con-
tact, the tie is very weak and based on changeable typifications. Acquiring
information from Facebook does not provide new shared experiences, so
it cannot encourage the organic formation of an impression of the other
and the sedimentation of a meaningful bond. However, it can and it does
offer grounds for a more detailed typification of the other as a separate
bondless entity, which, in turn, results in a certain projection about the
potential future interconnectedness. Namely, in this case the information
the new contact has published about the kind of music she enjoys consti-
tutes the basis for SB15 typifying her in a broader sense: There are signs
that might tell you how a person is. Starting from this typification, he
developed a certain projection about how strong would a future tie pos-
sibly be and the potential decreased as compared to before this informa-
tion was known.
Yet, in cases where the subject has a clear projection for the future of
the tie, or at least a clear idea about what would be a desirable future for
that tie, content would be interpreted close to how it is interpreted in
strong ties, despite the weakness of the current connection with the other.
Below, there is an example:

This is embarrassing, but for example if I met a boy I liked, I am going to

check. You could say that I am stalking this person, but yes, I would check
out his friends and who wrote on his wall and yeah, maybe see if he is
together with someone, who are his best friends, but of course I prefer to
go and ask and have a chat and meet them, but sometimes it’s just easier to
go on Facebook and have a look. (SB34)

In this case, the subject is not trying to typify the other, like the person
in the example above, but there is a difference in the level of stability of
the tie at the moment of viewing the profile. In the case before, there was
no solidified impression and the future of the tie with the other was
uncertain, whereas in the latter case, the subject had already decided she
liked the boy and was projecting a tie of certain strength. In light of that
projection, the interviewee is interpreting the information from the pro-
file as a source for reconstituting his experience on the one hand and as
data directly relevant for their tie, on the other hand. The interest in who
98  G.-I. Ivana

writes on his wall and who his best friends are is part of the attempt to
create an imaginary about his experience and the dynamic of his world
within reach. The interest in whether he is dating another person is
directly linked to her projection about the future of their tie. In the case
of strong ties, information on the other’s profile had an impact on the tie
if it was interpreted as affecting the interconnectedness between the
owner of the profile and the overviewer. Here, in weak ties, there is little
typification of the other based on passed interconnectedness, but there is
an imagined future strong tie and present situations and events that can
restrict that imaginary. In this case, such a situation is if he is in a relation-
ship with someone else. So, the interpretation of public information is not
only a continuation of an existing plot or the reconstitution of an inaccessible
one, but the projection of a future plot.
At the same time, not all users are as attentive to the public informa-
tion shared by their new weak ties. Furthermore, some of them make a
specific point of not reading into any of that information. When asked
about why he decided to have very high level of privacy for the contents
he shares on Facebook, one interviewee says:

Because I don’t want anyone to have preconceptions about me. I just want
them to meet me and see who I am, not expect someone better or worse
than what I am like, because you can’t know a person through their profile.
You can see some things about them, but you can’t really know them. (SB2)

Someone else has a similar opinion:

This is the bad thing about Facebook profiles, that you are allowing the
person to know you without having talked to him/her. This scares me. It
scares me in the sense that if you are with a girl in a disco, you meet her and
she adds you to Facebook, she just takes a look on your profile and you don
t have to tell her anything more. She already knows in what field you work,
if you like music, if you play an instrument… In this sense, I don’t like it
at all. I’d rather she had my phone number, but not my Facebook profile.
(SB23—translated from Spanish)

Both these subjects express their concern with being evaluated in a

detached artificial manner, based on the limited information they shared
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    99

on Facebook. As we have seen in the quotations above (one of which

belonged to the same SB23), a common interpretation of what the other
publishes is the categorization of the author of the content in a static
category. Then, as a result of that classification, the future tie is bound
within certain limits of closeness. So, they don’t want the interconnected-
ness from shared experience to be altered by previous typifications accord-
ing to ideal types. In my understanding, that is what SB2 is talking about
when he says that one cannot be known through their profile. He means
that the interconnectedness that would occur in a shared experience is
not predictable by a categorization of the other according to an ideal type
constructed using information from Facebook. That is also why SB23
does not want to make his Facebook profile available to new contacts.
Yet, it is important to notice that the concerns of both of the subjects
occur in relation to themselves being typified, rather than to the practice
of them typifying others. Moreover, I believe their concern with having
their information interpreted this way comes from an assumption of typ-
icality of their own practice. Of course, the processes of constructing a
new tie through face-to-face interaction will often have the same evalua-
tive dimension, but that is blend in a shared experience and read together
with the experience. Consequently, the subjects prefer to be known in
interaction, although, as SB23 points out, he would probably share the
same information about what he does and what he likes, as he shares on
Facebook. Yet, that would be bonding because of the interconnectedness
of experiences, whereas the acquisition of Facebook public information
can only produce a typification of the other through deposits of knowl-
edge. It must be said the evaluative mechanisms through which the infor-
mation about the other is read by the receiver involve a mix of reflections,
emotions, beliefs, and so on. Nevertheless, the input comes strictly in the
form of stocks of factual information, devoid of the shared experience.
Having said this, we need to keep in mind that these distant and static
typifications of the other may function in different directions with respect
to the tie:

I wouldn’t say it’s a huge surprise, but just a matter of interest in… for
example I remember I added one friend, I mean when you meet people, you
have an idea, or just guessing what this person likes.(…) That happened
100  G.-I. Ivana

with one of my new friends and she liked, for example Nabokov and I
thought hm, that’s strange, because I also like him and for me it was quite
surprising./ INT: But does is change the opinion about that person?/ SB12:
Well, it always changes at least to a certain degree. At least you know this
person a bit better and it changes your perception of this person a bit. (SB12)

This quotation illustrates that evaluations done through Facebook also

produce a green light for the possibility of a tie with the other. Another
interesting aspect signaled by this interviewee and which has been pointed
out repeatedly by other subjects as well is the fact that even in weak or
new ties typifications are made in advance. Afterwards they may turn out
to be more or less accurate, more or less stable. These typifications also
shape the meaning construction around that which is learned through
Facebook. They will have consequences on the further development of
the bond. However, this element is stronger in ties that have already
developed a certain strength, or at least stability in a weak connection.
Another facet of this normativity emerges here, and it refers to circum-
scribing what is an acceptable reading of the other in light of the tie
involved. When the tie is weak enough, the social rule deems it “normal”
and “understandable” to seek for particular cues or to develop evaluations
different than with strong bonds. It also deems it acceptable to have what
appears as a “rational” approach to the relation with the other, which
these typifications reveal. As Parsons (1951) had argued through his
notion of affective neutrality, emotion is suppressed in secondary institu-
tions and expressed in primary ones. In this case, the weak bond is closer
to a secondary institution, which means a rational state is predominant,
a state which is not unemotional, but one where emotions remain in the
background (Barbalet 1998). Thus, evaluations like the one above, based
openly on cognition are part of the normative handing of the unsedi-
mented tie. The possibilities of non-interactional exchanges of informa-
tion offered by the network also contribute to leaving non-cognitive
mechanisms of making sense of the other in the background.
In this subchapter, I have explored the understanding given to unad-
dressed information by weak ties from one’s past and by weak recent ties.
Now I will focus mainly on weak ties that have a somewhat constant pres-
ence in the subject’s life, but with whom the bond never became stronger.
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    101

Quotidian Weak Ties

Most of the remarks about interpreting the contents posted by new weak
ties can also be applied for older ties that have maintained themselves
below a threshold of closeness. Yet, there are also a set of elements that
distinguish older and newer ties of comparable strengths. One of them is
the abovementioned role of previous organic impressions that are sedi-
mented and grounded in a longer period of interaction. In case the inter-
actions have been scarce enough that those impressions still have a
provisional character, we may still speak of a certain (although paradoxi-
cal) novelty of that tie, despite it dating from a moment before the imme-
diate past. In this case, information from one’s public activity on Facebook
can trigger new categorizations or evaluations, like they do in new ties.
Furthermore, also similar to what happens to new weak ties, when the
other is somewhat closer or a certain potential for strengthening the tie is
noticed, the contents will be read through the lens of experience recon-
struction, more than life course approximation.
These differences between the ways in which newer and older weak
ties are interpreted tend to reoccur in other contexts as well. Asked
about whether he has any concern about the authenticity of profiles,
one respondent elaborates through an example of what he believes to be
lack of authenticity from someone in his network and concludes by
saying:

What I told you was just a small part of the profile activity, but it also con-
nects with what you know about the person in the non-digital environ-
ment. So, I think in the end it’s the people that you don’t like, you don’t
like in the online as well. (SB11)

Someone else explains it in the following words:

I think there is always a suspicion of posting what looks good for certain
target groups or your circle of friends, so yes, credibility is an issue. I mean
I have my own suspicion of two or three people constantly doing it. (…)
It’s probably a mixture of what I see them doing on Facebook and what I
know about them on real life. (SB3)
102  G.-I. Ivana

In both of these examples, the content in itself was not enough for
them to typify the other in a certain way (compared to the cases above
where, for new ties, their taste in music or their job would be considered).
These two subjects, however, were interpreting information that they did
not necessarily see as solid criteria for classifying the other, but it never-
theless added a new argument to the existing impression by reading that
content in light of that very impression. It is a circular mechanism by
which the other is re-evaluated with the old evaluation as both the under-
lying premise and the achieved conclusion. Thus, the purpose is not chal-
lenging how the other has been regarded, but reconfirming it. Moreover,
some of the respondents derive a certain satisfaction out of this confirma-
tion of previous impressions. One of them talks about it:

I had a friend who hooked up with a girl. I heard the girl was not a saint. I
added her on Facebook just out of curiosity, to see what’s her deal.
Meanwhile, they broke up and theoretically I had no connection with the
girl anymore. She posts such stupid things! She is a veritable bimbo. She
makes grammar mistakes and things like men are pigs and look how cool we
are on the beach! I haven’t unfriended her because I am curious what she
will do next. I just want to laugh a bit. (SB32—translated from Romanian)

In this case, the subject had typified the other very fast after having
added her, but he explains that he enjoys having his typification restated
through the contents she posts time and time again. However, this is an
atypical scenario, because most of the interviewees affirm they would
periodically delete very weak ties if the past experiences have not created
enough of a bond between them and no future interconnectedness with
that person is foreseen.

Yeah, because those people that I think we added each other just by being
for example in the same class, but we never ever had a conversation or the
only thing I know about this person is that he studied in the same univer-
sity and the name. So, there is no point of interest. Sometimes I see them
in the news feed and I go and delete them. (SB12)

These users highlight the fact that, in the decision to delete someone
on the basis of the weakness of the tie, two elements are considered. One
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    103

is the current strength of the tie, which is correlated with the bond that
has been established between them through past shared experience, and
the other is the projection about the potential of the tie. So, as discussed
earlier on, besides the categorizations according to ideal types or the pos-
sibility of imagining someone else’s experience through gathering infor-
mation about them, in the end, that which gives the strength of the tie is
the interconnectedness with the subject. The other has to be anchored in
the user’s life by past or future ropes, because otherwise any exchange of
information is not read as part of a tie. It is by following this line of
understanding that another respondent reached the conclusion that elim-
inating someone from Facebook is like eliminating them from your life.
Namely, when asked about instances when he deleted people from his
network, one user explained he did when he knew there is no future
­relation there and he would never be in contact with that person again.
Furthermore, he admitted conflicts triggered exclusion from his circle of
friends: “You cross me, I eliminate you” (SB19—translated from Spanish).
He insists he was also eliminated from other people’s networks and he
found the experience hurtful precisely because it clearly meant exclusion
from the everyday life of the other. Yet, his words rather seem to point to
the reverse scenario, namely, the others are seen as not being part of your
life (or in the case of conflict, not being a desirable part of your life), so
there is no interest for knowing what they have to say and making sense
of it.

Stalking
Last but not least, when talking about ties of different strengths and the
meaning attribution to content they post, perhaps one of the most com-
mon issues that I have also briefly touched upon earlier with new ties (but
that is not limited to new ties) is stalking. By stalking, I am referring to
the activity of constantly monitoring any accessible change occurring in
another user’s profile without initiating an interaction or admitting to
have been involved in a detailed process of overviewing them. The topic
has been taken up particularly from the perspective of psychological well-­
being (Marshall 2012; Lyndon et al. 2011; Chaulk and Jones 2011) or
104  G.-I. Ivana

threats and strategies of protecting privacy (Young and Quan-Hasse

2013). Surprisingly, little attention has been paid to the phenomenon by
the branch of sociology dealing with interactions and social bonds. In
this regard, I come back to the initial issue of the sense of clandestinity in
viewing contents posted by the other, as a result of an assumption that
those contents, despite being public, were addressed to ties of certain
strength for the author. There is a question about whether one is at the
level of closeness where they are expected to look.
The processes users describe are similar to what Cooley calls the look-
ing glass self, but they apply to ties. Cooley’s ([1902] 1964) theory, also
used by Mead, points out the construction of the self according to three
stages:

1 . One imagines how he/she appears to the other.

2. They imagine how that appearance is evaluated.
3. They construct themselves according to (1) and (2).

I believe the same steps can be identified in the words of the Facebook
users to whom I have talked, but in relation to ties. Namely:

1. The user imagines how close the relationship appears to the other
(what the user thinks the other sees). For example, I think X does not
see us as very close.
2. He/she imagines how that level of closeness is evaluated by the other
(what the user thinks the other sees as ideal as compared to (1). For
example, I think X is happy with us not being very close.
3. He/she constructs the tie according to the two premises above. For
example, I should try to maintain this level of closeness.

In other words, the level of displayed closeness reflects the imaginary

about, firstly, the other’s view of the actual closeness and, secondly, the
imaginary about the other’s desire for closeness. Nevertheless, there is the
level of how close the subjects themselves feel/want to be to the other.
One’s own account of the relationship and the imaginary about the other’s
position are of course dependent upon each other. I believe phrases like “it
is not interesting for me to look and maybe I am not supposed to look”
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    105

capture that process perfectly. In the interviewee’s view, the tie is weak, he
does not want it to be any stronger and he expects the other also perceives
the tie as weak, so he does not find any reason to overview that contact.
Even when the expectations of the other are not mentioned explicitly,
they are intertwined in the ways in which users motivate their own actions
and create their own view about closeness. That is also why SB11 feels
that it is appropriate to contribute to conversations about actions he had
been part of. This gives him the confirmation that the level of closeness
he has attributed to the relation, based on previous interactions and based
on the estimations about the other’s account of the strength of the tie, is
accurate. He explains it further in these lines:

If it’s people that are not part of my daily life, but they post something that
I enjoy and let’s say I want to, not give my approval, because they don’t
need my approval for anything, but send a positive vibe, well maybe a like
is enough, because otherwise you might be participating in conversations
that are not yours. If someone you are not close to publishes something
that you want to support, but in the conversation there are others who are
not in your circle, a like is enough. (SB11)

The user is aware of the ways in which his actions are read as reflecting
a certain level of closeness that the other might or might not share.
Feedback is, consequently, the expression of the level of closeness not that
one necessarily assigns to a relation in a certain moment, but the level of
closeness one is willing to claim he/she has assigned to the relationship,
which is, as I have described above, dependent upon the imaginary about
the other’s assigned level of closeness. Since this is a chapter about the
interpretation of public posts by ties of different strengths, I will not
insist upon the issue of feedback right now, but rather on the opacity of
the process of overviewing and how meaning is attributed to that process
on the basis of tie strength, and imagined tie strength for the other,
respectively. This constant negotiation is clearly captured in the following
quotation:

Now I am into a guy and we don’t know each other too well, so we are not
Facebook friends, but I browsed for him and some of the information on
106  G.-I. Ivana

his wall is public. So, I check his profile very often, although with my lim-
ited access, there is not much to see. I just see if he added a new friend or
what event he said he would attend I don’t go to the same events or do
anything about it, but if he ever found out somehow that I do this or
worse, that I do it daily, I’d die of shame.(…) Yes, if I also found out he was
checking mine just as much, that would be great! (SB26)

This respondent admits her tie with the other is, for the time being,
weak. In fact, it is weak enough that they are not even connected with
each other on Facebook. Nevertheless, she has a projection about this tie
gaining strength. At the same time, she would feel ashamed if the other
knew she saw the contents which he posted publicly, with no restrictions,
and which were, at least formally, addressed to anyone who is interested
enough to look. The reason for that is that she suspects a discrepancy
between her level of interest in reconstructing as much as possible of his
experience and his assumed lack of interest in her. That is why, when
asked what she would feel if reciprocity was established, her interpreta-
tion of the whole situation would be entirely different.
Thus, the conditions leading to stalking are, at least based on the state-
ments used in these instances:

1. the user believes the other sees the existing tie as weak and has no
desire of strengthening it;
2. the user’s own ideal tie is stronger than the current tie;
3. the user acts in ways that are consistent with his/her own degree of
ideal closeness, which goes beyond the level of closeness they estimate
the other considers ideal,
4. the users keep their actions undisclosed, so that the other does not
gain awareness about what they assume is a discrepancy between their
own and the other’s ideal levels of closeness.

Facebook is one of the few environments designed in such a way that

it allows for that to happen. Since knowing of the other through their
public posts is completely lacking transparency, there is, especially with
weak ties, a constant thrill and guilt of acquiring information in a way in
which nothing is given in return and in which actions can be taken
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    107

according to the subject’s wishes, without requiring a negotiation of

meanings or an agreement with the other.
However, between the weak tie that gets deleted because it is projected
as non-existent in the future and the tie for which the user has a projec-
tion of strength, there are the weak ties that are projected as remaining
constant. They might not be framed primarily through shared experience
and interconnectedness, but there were nevertheless some shared experi-
ences, over mixed with an overarching static typification. These ties are,
as users have pointed out and as I have briefly mentioned before, materi-
als from comparisons. These comparisons are different from those focus-
ing on life trajectories, since they are mainly focused on lifestyle and
taste.

On the News Feed I just take a brief look and I see the majority posts
things like I love you, I miss you, I can’t live without you and these things
bore me and then I go and play something./ INT: But do you block them?
(because you can do that if you don t want to see what they post)/ SB25:
Oh, no, I don t block them, because I still like to see what they say.
(SB25—translated from Romanian)
For example, if someone joins a club that is really stupid, like some sen-
tence that is trying to be clever, but it’s not. It makes me think: Dude,
you’re so stupid! I am not going to say anything, because it’s just me getting
upset, but it’s also fun to think this way. It’s like: I’m so smart and clever!
Ha ha! I only like smart jokes! (laughs)./ INT: So would you say you com-
pare yourself with other people?/ SB15: Oh, definitely, all the time: *I
wouldn’t do this. I am better than this person, because I do that instead.
(SB15)

In these two fragments, the interviewees talk about posts by ties that
are weak enough to be typified almost exclusively according to Facebook
posts, rather than becoming meaningful through shared experience. No
reference to an underlying tie between the interpreter and the other is
mentioned, since the subjects do not need that aspect to explain their
understanding of the content. Furthermore, the respondents both con-
fess to drawing a positive emotion from generating a negative typification
based on the information they receive. In the case of SB25, she only says
that despite being bored by a type of posts, she still enjoys receiving them.
108  G.-I. Ivana

SB15 talks about a similar ambivalence, namely, he states it upsets him

when viewing content he classifies as stupid (together with the author of
the content), but he also finds it fun. In contrast to what SB25 affirmed,
he is also explicit about the reason behind enjoying such typifications,
and that reason is self-validation. Thus, seeing posts from other users that
are weak ties and that one can typify as stupid, boring, attention seeking,
and so on without having to deal with other nuances of their behavior
that might indicate anything different helps some of the subjects reaffirm
a sense of self-worth. At the same time, if we go back to the fragments
discussed at the beginning of the chapter when referring to the attribu-
tion of meaning for posts by strong ties, respondents did not use Facebook
posts to typify people with whom they had strong bonds, irrespective of
their possible disagreements with the contents published. Thus, it is
mainly the strength and type of underlying tie between the author of the
post and the interpreter that favor one attribution of meaning or another.
At the same time, even looking at two comparable weak ties, not all posts
from both will be read in the self-validating mode by the overviewer.
When the tie is weak enough to allow typifications through Facebook
public contents, only then does the nature of those typifications vary
according to content itself. And evaluating something as interesting or
boring, stupid or clever, and so on (while bracketing tie strength) is not
random either. This is a topic I will tackle in more detail in a different
section.
To conclude, this chapter has been aiming to shed light over the issue
of how meaning is attributed to public posts in relation to tie between the
author and the interpreter of the content. I have firstly looked into mean-
ing construction for various strong ties (close friends, romantic partners,
and ties overshadowed by conflict) and how the underlying tie favors
certain readings of public posts. Then, I have turned to different types of
weak ties (old colleagues, new acquaintances, and stagnant weak ties) and
analyzed their relations with meaning construction in public posts. Some
of the main processes identified were static typifications according to
ideal types, attempts at creating an imaginary about the other’s lived
experience in a dynamic world within reach, panoramic views of life tra-
jectories, projections about tie strength, and lifestyle comparisons.
   Meaning Construction in Overviewing: “It Was Like Catching…    109

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 5
Meaning Construction in Online Social
Interactions

In Chap. 2, I have discussed the condition under which I will consider an

exchange of reciprocal actions and effects to be a social interaction.
Namely, social interactions were those reciprocal actions and effects char-
acterized by (1) a dimension of consciousness, (2) where the interacting
subjects took each other for granted as meaning makers and (3) in which
the actions were directed at one another or interpreted as such. In the
context of research about exchanges of information occurring on
Facebook, I believe the third point in this conceptualization is the most
challenging, since the observable indicators for directionality are fewer
than face to face (or, in some cases, they are missing entirely). In the pre-
vious chapter I have explored those exchanges of information that unfold
in an undirected (and thus non-interactional) manner. Yet, there are a set
of options available to establish directionality and social interaction in
exchanges on Facebook. The most obvious is sending someone a message
on the chatting option, where the receiver has to be selected from a list of
contacts. I have referred to these situations as private social interactions.
At the same time, there is the category of public social interactions. They
consist of feedback to public posts (not only comments but also likes and
shares), as well as posts on another user’s timeline and tags and indirect

© The Author(s) 2018 111

G.-I. Ivana, Social Ties in Online Networking, Palgrave Studies in
Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71595-7_5
112  G.-I. Ivana

references to shared experiences (i.e. jokes with subtext), where the

­intention of the author of the post is for the one who is addressed to
interpret the post as an interaction.
The aim of the current chapter is to shed light on the meaning con-
struction of contents exchanged in interactions, while keeping in mind
the underlying tie between the interactors. Firstly, I will look into public
interactions unfolding between users who are bond by strong ties and
weak ties, respectively. Secondly, I will turn to private interactions, also
focusing separately on social interactions between strong and weak ties.
What needs to be said from the beginning is that strong and weak ties on
the one hand and the decision for privacy and publicness of an interac-
tion on the other are strongly linked. At the same time, it is important to
keep in mind that especially in the case of interactions constructed around
public posts, the meaning constructions discussed in the chapter before
still apply. They are not replaced, but complemented with new meanings
and new shared contents as an interaction begins.

Strong Ties and Public Interactions

Entitlement to Interact

There are many ways in which strong ties correlate with public interac-
tions on Facebook, but I will start this discussion with perhaps one of the
most common and generalized affirmations made by interviewees. It
refers to giving feedback on public posts. Below, there are two examples:

INT: But do you ever like or comment on other people’s posts?/ SB25:
Only if they are very close friends, who I feel I am on good grounds with,
who I talk daily with, yes, I give them a like, post a monkey that smiles or
something. (SB25—translated from Romanian)
I think that if they posted something interesting, for example an article
or something, I would go and read it and I would get the point even if I
don t comment, but if it’s a friend, I go and say “Hey, this is great!” and the
comment is not really important, it would just be a way of saying that I
read it and share something with your friends that I wouldn’t share with
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    113

everybody. I wouldn’t do that with someone I don’t know that well, even if
I would still get the same from that post. (SB34)

These are only two fragments illustrating the connection between the
strength of the tie and the public interactions, but all of the interviewees
have confirmed the same consideration given to the bond they have with
the other before initiating a public interaction. There are many elements
involved in this relation between the construction of the interaction and
the underlying tie by which it is framed, but one of the central ones is the
idea of entitlement. Let us go back to the discussion in the previous chap-
ter about the (non-interactional) exchanges that occur in viewing and
attributing meaning to a public post by someone from the subject’s net-
work of contacts. As I have showed then, despite the lack of explicit
addressability for the contents posted, the interviewees typically interpret
those contents as being for someone. Moreover, that someone is assumed
to be a person (or a group of people) who are in a close bond with the
author of the post. That is why the idea of clandestinity appeared when the
subjects looked on the profile or the contents posted by someone who
they imagined would not expect them to look because of the weak tie.
Conversely, in the cases where the tie is strong, the subject feels he/she is
one of those addressed, or at least one of those with whom the author of
the content would not mind sharing that content. Both of the interview-
ees above explain this very clearly. They would initiate an interaction
because they feel if would not be against their own or the other’s under-
standing of the strength of the tie if they did so. SB25 explains that if the
author is someone very close, to whom she talks daily, she would feel it
would not be inappropriate if she commented on his/her post. SB34 even
makes a parallel between very similar contents posted by two people with
whom she has ties of different strengths. If the tie is weak, she would not
say anything, even if the content impressed her in some way. Yet, when the
tie is stronger, she would. Although, as we have seen in the chapter before,
information about weak ties is often acquired and interpreted on Facebook,
an interaction is a way of acknowledging that practice which is, although
very common, regarded as transgressing boundaries previously established
for that bond. One of the interviewees explains how she feels about receiv-
ing comments from contacts with whom she has a very weak tie:
114  G.-I. Ivana

There are people who do this (note: comment on posts despite not being
close to the author of the post), and it also happens to me, and that is really
really annoying, because there is no connection, they just come out of
nowhere. (SB1)
My problem is, I don’t know how it is for the others, but I’ve got friends
who love to comment. So even if they don’t get it, they will comment and
probably their comments would do more harm than good. (SB4)

I am using these quotations about weak bonds here (despite the fact
that this is a section about public interaction between users who have a
strong tie) to illustrate the type of situation that the interviewees above
wish to avoid when saying they would only comment if they thought the
tie was strong enough. Furthermore, they show why the feeling of entitle-
ment is so important in initiating a public interaction on Facebook. As
the users above highlight, the publicness does not mean all feedback is
welcome. SB1 says she is bothered by users who come out of nowhere
despite the lack of connection. So, she is openly bothered by the other’s
lack of consideration for the strength of the tie when initiating the inter-
action. In the case of SB4, it is not precisely the tie strength itself that
she’d like the others to take into account. She is bothered particularly by
those commenting although they did not understand the intended mean-
ing of the post. This indirectly touches upon the same tie strength,
because the ones who are likely to “get it” are typically the ones who have
enough information to place the post in a contextual setting, which are
those strongly bonded with the subject.
However, entitlement also has other forms of manifestation:

For instance, my work colleague… when I have a picture with my sister or

something and my sister posts the photo over the weekend, on Monday my
work colleague tells me I already know what you did this weekend. I saw it
on Facebook, because your sister posts it all. But it’s true that sometimes
you just don’t know how someone found something out, but they say you
posted it on Facebook and someone else saw it and it just went from mouth
to mouth from there. (SB19—translated from Spanish)

Here, the work colleague is a close enough tie of the subject’s and she
feels she is entitled to receive the information she is receiving through
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    115

Facebook. If it was not for that post, she assumes she would have gained
access to that information anyway in an alternative way (the interviewee
would tell her about how she spent last weekend on Monday). Thus, in
the colleague’s understanding, she can be open about having seen that
information and about having paid attention to it.
The axis of entitlement and clandestinity is also very interesting from
a different angle. I will begin with an interview fragment and discuss it
afterwards:

So, if I had 10 Facebook profiles with 10 people in each of them, it would

be a lot easier. The audience is too mixed for me. There are some options
for creating groups and I guess I could do that, but I never bothered to.
(SB9)

This incompatibility between different areas of her social life that the
interviewee is talking about is avoidable by the organization of Facebook
contacts in certain groups, but that is an option most of the respondents
have considered too laborious to understand and to use. However, the
resulting space reunites individuals with various expectations and pro-
cesses of meaning attributions, hence the awareness of some of the users
about the difficulty of posting something that would be compatible with
all of them. The solution for many of them is to focus certain groups of
contacts with which they wish to interact or whose impression they are
actively attempting to manage:

I support gay marriage because I have a few gay friends, I think it is morally
correct, whatever (…) If my group of friends doesn’t have a problem with
that, but people that I am not so close to would be offended, I don’t care.
It’s fine. (SB15)

Coming back to the theme of feedback and entitlement, overviewers

are also Facebook users, so they already have an understanding of the
interactional space in which they are functioning. They already know
about the collapsing of contacts coming from different areas of one’s life
and different tie strengths, so they construct the interactions in a way that
mimics the divisions functioning outside of Facebook. That is the reason
116  G.-I. Ivana

why, often times, the publicness of the post is not immediately inter-
preted as entitlement to like or comment, irrespective of who you might
be in relation to the author of the post, and that is also why, despite the
accessibility of information, the sense of clandestinity persists in moni-
toring especially weak ties.

Institutionalization of Interaction Habits

Furthermore, users who have a strong tie with each other do not only
interpret posts on Facebook as possibilities for interaction, but some see
it as obligations for interaction.

I feel obliged to like all the pictures and posts of my best friend, or at least
the pictures, not necessarily the posts, because maybe I won’t look at the
videos or other things she posts all the time, but the pictures, I like them
all, because if I, her closest friend, didn’t appreciate her, who else should?
And she does the same for me. It sounds very very stupid… But if I go
somewhere and I have just posted a picture, if not even your mom and
your best friend like it, it sucks! (SB7—translated from Romanian)

Here, the subject explains she views giving feedback to her closest
friends as a behavior that shows her support and proves her commitment.
It is something a friend “should do”. As discussed before, different tie
strengths are constructed, negotiated, and synchronized in social interac-
tion. Various behaviors are enacted by one person and read by the other
participant to the interaction as indicators of different strengths of ties
and different types of ties. After the tie gains stability and it is assumed to
be mutually shared (i.e. we are friends), that meaning construction which
is to an important extent based on one’s own past experience (like other
ties regarded as friendships) brings with it a set of expectations about how
future interactions should unfold. This solidification of the tie can also be
seen as a process of institutionalization of social interaction (Berger and
Luckman 1966). Yet, irrespective of how we theorize it, it results in a
clear association between certain tie strengths and certain interactions.
While many of these associations are applied from face-to-face interac-
tions on Facebook (i.e. if you are a good friend, you will not try to
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    117

embarrass me in public), others are specific institutionalizations devel-

oped with the options available on Facebook. In the case of SB7, the
habit of liking everything that her best friend posts publicly has become
institutionalized. At the same time, that institutionalization arises from
and is incorporated into the previous understanding of a set of other
institutionalized habits that are framed by friendship.
Another example of institutionalization of Facebook public interac-
tions is the hierarchy of feedbacks in relation to the strength of the tie.
This is another issue on which almost all interviewees agreed.

With the like I am more flexible. It still has to be someone who is a little
bit closer. If it’s just an acquaintance, even if they post something that is
really interesting, I might be feeling uncomfortable. But if it’s a bit closer,
I might like it and if it’s even closer, I might comment. (SB15)
If it’s people that are not part of my daily life, but they post something
that I enjoy and let’s say I want to, not give my approval, because they don’t
need my approval for anything, but send a positive vibe, well maybe a like
is enough, because otherwise you might be participating in conversations
that are not yours. (SB11)

These two fragments come to support the argument above about the
institutionalization of certain habits. Just as SB7 saw it as a rule that you
like everything your best friend does, SB11 and SB15 see it as a rule that
you may like posts from weak ties, but you should only comment on
posts from stronger ties. I believe one important reason for the develop-
ment of this hierarchy of feedbacks is their different nature. On the one
hand, “a like” is a trigger for an interaction because it addresses to the
other certain information (however limited): I have seen what you shared
and I enjoy it/agree with it/encourage it. It also says: I feel the strength of
our underlying tie entitles me to communicate that to you. However, due
to the standardization of this action (the content of the feedback is that
and none other), it is too little to construct a full-blown shared lived
experience unfolding in a common here and now. A comment, on the
other hand, does not convey a predetermined message and thus implies a
bit more access to the experience of the commenter by the author of the
original post. The more elaborated the comment, the more it becomes
118  G.-I. Ivana

part of a lived episode of interaction, because the interactors are experi-

encing each other through their words. That is why, in the examples
above, in order for the commenter to feel comfortable with generating a
common here and now in which him/her and the other would have a
shared experience, they have to be strongly bonded. Yet, this is not always
the case.

The Issue of Contents

Some of the interviewees have not linked commenting with tie strength
or with any particular frame of interpretation in terms of the underlying
tie, but focused mainly on the interaction as shared experience:

I don’t actually care if someone likes my comments, likes my posts or shares

the things that I post. I only care if they comment, because than there is a
conversation going on and of course I am paying attention to what they
say. (SB6)

Here, the respondent points out that what he values most is if his posts
are commented upon and that debates are born on the basis of the con-
tent he shared. Nonetheless, I believe his different approach from the
ones of the other respondents who emphasized the importance of the
bond they had with the commenter lies also in the type of content gener-
ating the interaction. If the content is not read as having been shared with
ties of certain strength, the issue of entitlement loses its weight. For
instance, in the case of the SB19, who was talking about her work col-
league who tells her she saw what she did over the weekend, sharing that
information and admitting to having acquired it are behaviors associated
to certain tie strength. Contrastingly, publishing an article about the mis-
takes of the government is not an action indicating a particular level of
bond, so even those who are not close to the author of the post might feel
invited to intervene. SB1 explains this through her own experience:

No, I am bothered only if a post is addressed let’s say not to one single
person but let’s say to five persons. Then, if the person is not one of those
five, than yes (laughs). But if it’s general, like the Marx insulter (note: she
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    119

had had a recent post with a link that generated Marxist insults), that is not
personal, so everybody can like it but I do expect that only persons who
like Marx will like it. (SB1)

So, although she has a projection about the future feedback based on
her previous stock of knowledge about her contacts, SB1 brackets the
strength of the tie when she does not interpret the content she posted as
personal.
In other words, the institutionalization of feedback stems from the
institutionalization of particular behaviors in relation to the normativity
of informal bonds. Thus, certain types of ties and certain levels of close-
ness will allow for certain sets of behaviors to be considered acceptable.
What users have talked about with respect to Facebook public feedback
has pointed out the same institutionalization of particular behaviors in
relation to particular ties expands to the online environment. Thus, as
there is a social convention of talking about the weather with weak ties,
there is a social convention of liking, but refraining from commenting on
their posts. Of course, the more personal the content being shared, the
more important bond normativity becomes in moderating the behavior.

 nderstandings and Uses of the Publicness

U
of the Interaction

On a related note, another respondent affirms:

I think I like if people also like the post. I think it’s a normal reaction, I
don’t think there is a difference between the online and the offline. It’s the
same thing. If you say something and people are interested and that creates
a debate, it’s always a good social reward to you. (SB13)

This person is also interested in creating conversation, but from a dif-

ferent point of view than the respondent above. If SB6 saw it as an oppor-
tunity for interaction to be experienced, SB13 sees it as an opportunity to
validate himself socially, because we must keep in mind that all these
interactions are public. They are accessible to others in the network and
despite there being situations where the interactions spontaneously
120  G.-I. Ivana

emerge in a public setting, there are also cases where there is a rationale
behind them unfolding there. For instance, even in the above-discussed
idea of entitlement, which seems to only refer to the existing tie between
the one who posts a comment and the one who is addressed by it, the
dimension of publicness has an impact:

If I trust the person, I will wish them happy birthday publicly. If I don’t, I’ll
send them a private message. I do this when we have less friends in com-
mon, because the public posts I believe are more for their circle and it
would just seem like an unknown person appeared. Also on my own wall,
it is forbidden for people to post. I only lift the restriction on the 3rd of
November and on the 4th I close it again. (SB33—translated from Spanish)

Here, the subject is not only worried about how his action will be read
by the person to whom it is addressed but also about how it would look
for others who have access to it, namely, the friends of the addressee. He
assumes the receiver has a group of close friends who will notice his pres-
ence there through birthday wishes and expects them to interpret it as a
lack of understanding of the norms on his part. I find this fragment par-
ticularly interesting because it refers to an interaction that in most social
contexts is not limited to strong ties. If one’s birthday is today, any person
who interacts with them and is aware of it might say “happy birthday!”,
irrespective of our tie or who else witnesses it. Nevertheless, as previously
discussed, Facebook is a space constructed by the users through the con-
tents they share and the interactions in which they engage (on the foun-
dation of certain available possibilities). In this case, the respondent
highlights the fact that he interprets public profiles of other users as a
space of interaction for the owner’s close ties. Thus, it does not matter the
reason for posting, he still feels he is intruding and he is not entitled to be
there.
The reverse side of this increased awareness of the public character of
interactions occurring on one’s wall is using them to publicly convey cer-
tain messages. Like SB13 above who interpreted feedback on his posts as
a social reward, other respondents also read public social interactions in
terms of constructing or reaffirming themselves socially. Some of the sub-
jects affirm:
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    121

My friends tell me “oh, you didn’t even like my picture. Come on!” and
then I go and like their picture (laughs). Yeah, that is concrete pressure. But
that is only with very close friends. Otherwise, no, I don’t think I do (note:
feel pressure). (SB3) Look, the last like I gave was for someone from my
village, because they gave me 4 messages give me a like, give me a like, so I
liked it. (SB33—translated from Spanish)

This quotation shows public feedback from close ties as a way of grant-
ing face to one’s friend. The concept of face is defined by Goffman (1967)
as it follows: “The term face may be defined as the positive social value a
person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has
taken during a particular contact. Face is an image of self-delineated in
terms of approved social attributes-albeit an image that others may share,
as when a person makes a good showing for his profession or religion by
making a good showing for himself ”. According to the Oxford Dictionary,
in English, the word “face” was initially employed among the English-­
speaking community in China, and it referred to the ways in which
Chinese people behaved to avoid shame or disgrace. Moreover, it is still
an important element in Chinese society. Going further, Goffman (1967)
examines the theme of face work, which he believes to be a ritualized
process, often referred to as tact, savoir-faire, diplomacy, or social skill.
He states: “By face-work I mean to designate the actions taken by a per-
son to make whatever he is doing consistent with face. Face-work serves
to counteract ‘incidents’—that is, events whose effective symbolic impli-
cations threaten face” (Goffman 1967, p. 12).
The events SB33 is describing in relation to his close ties corresponds
to this conceptualization, with the amendment that in the interaction the
interviewee is referring to, the author and the beneficiary of face work are
not the same person. For this reason, rather than using face work, I prefer
the expression “granting face”. This practice could also explain the resorts
behind the institutionalization of the habit of liking all the posts of one’s
best friend that SB7 was talking about above. In both these cases, the
public interaction does not lead to any flow of experience because the
participants are not even oriented towards each other, but, like in a play,
constantly have in mind the audience. Unless the meanings others attri-
bute to a post or an interaction were at stake, SB33’s friend would have
122  G.-I. Ivana

no other reason to ask him to give feedback to her public posts. The
meaning the spectators construct for such interactions in which they are
never immersed can only be an approximation based on an ideal type.
In this sense, just as public posts can be analyzed as attempts of con-
structing an imaginary about the separate world outside of reach of those
who are at a distance, so that they can be read according to it afterwards,
public interactions can also be interpreted as concerted attempts by the
author of a post and his/her close ties to construct a similar imaginary. In
public interactions, there are added elements of context for weak ties to
typify (because strong ties might know the background plot or, even if
they do not, they will already have an impression about the author). And
these interactions function as a coordinated effort of face building for one
or several of those who participate in them. Furthermore, they are indeed
used in the construction of meaning by some of the interviewees:

For instance, when you look at the pictures, you also notice the friends the
person has, how many likes they got, because if they have many, it’s like
what they are saying is important and they have this popularity and I like
this more than someone who posts something and nobody says anything
about it. Of course, if a person adds more friends, more people will see what
they do and they’ll get more feedback, but I also think it has something to
do with their popularity in their social life. (SB19—translated from Spanish)

This is an example of a weak tie overviewing and typifying the others

according to the information she acquires from public posts and the feed-
back received for them. At the same time, as the interview fragments
above show, typifications coming from the category of weak ties were the
actual aim of many of these interactions, so as marginal as she may appear
as a profile overviewer, SB19 might actually play an important part in the
interaction as an observer with typifying power.

 revious Shared Experiences and the Unfolding

P
of New Interactions

There are, however, instances where the subjects depict public interac-
tions with strong ties within a different logic. One example in this sense
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    123

is the use of inside jokes or specific references to past common experi-

ences. An interviewee says: “I am a sportsman, so I might post things
related to my sport, or something addressed only to those who are in the
same team as me, some inside jokes. For instance, there was an inside
joke about a song, and I posted a comment exactly with that joke”
(SB32—translated from Romanian). Later on he talks about a different
type of complicity, but from the perspective of the observer: “Sometimes
you see two people who broke up and you have both of them in your list.
You see them sending subliminal messages, usually songs. I think they
Google it: I wonder if there’s a song saying what I want to say now
(laughs). It happens often, you can’t miss it, really” (SB32—translated
from Romanian).
These are cases of public interactions between strong ties, in which the
participants to the interaction are not formally addressing each other, but
which are paradoxically to a greater extent aimed at communicating with
each other than most of the open interactions analyzed above.
In the first quotation, the subject talks about the issue of inside jokes,
in which other respondents also admitted to have gotten involved. Since
most of these instances (starting with the one quoted here) happen in
public interactions, I believe besides the emphasis on the strength of the
tie, these episodes also have an expositional component. Namely, inside
jokes function as a mechanism creating a delimitation between the insid-
ers and the outsiders. Those who are part of the subject’s sports team,
with whom he shared an amusing first-hand experience are told that that
shared experience represents a ground on which he relates to them, thus
emphasizing the strength of the tie. Furthermore, the lack of access of
others to the initial experience or to the commonly shared meaning
makes the ones who do understand it a privileged few and shows those
who do not understand it parts of his experience while he was not in the
same here and now as them.
In the second fragment, the one about the couple who broke up, the
dynamics of the interaction are different. In contrast to the case of inside
jokes where the aim was for those addressed to interpret the content as it
was intended, in the interaction of the couple, the intention in relation to
the other’s interpretation is ambivalent. On the one hand, each of the
interactants has a message to send and hopes the other will understand it
124  G.-I. Ivana

as it was meant originally. On the other hand, they had rather communi-
cate it in an ambiguous form (a song), so that they can avoid acknowledg-
ing the interaction. Here, the same uncertain directionality is purposefully
employed to actually cultivate ambivalence. Another interviewee says:

It so happens that we are fighting right now. I mean we had a fight and I
got mad and I want to ignore him and now he keeps posting stuff on
Facebook (…) I feel they are for me, I know it. Even yesterday he checked
in a bar, which he never does. I sent him a message saying “Don’t wait,
because I am not coming”. And he answered “Yeah, I was kind of thinking
about that”. So I was right! (SB7—translated from Romanian)

Also, unlike in the case of inside jokes where the addressee should
know the message is aimed at him/her and the publicness is used only for
creating the distinction between the inside and the outside, here the pub-
licness is masking the direction. If we are to imagine in the inside joke
besides the content, the author also writes the name of the friend he/she
is addressing, that makes the intention more explicit, but does not change
much in the nature of the interaction. Yet, in these examples of romantic
tensions, tagging the one who is addressed would undermine the purpose
of the entire post. So, the public character is here a camouflage, with no
emphasis being paid to the construction of meaning by those who are
witnessing the exchange. In other words, the publicness is used as a mask
for what is a very targeted and private message, while in the case of the
shared jokes, the public character was a means for delimiting the insider
and outsider status.
What is unifying these cases is the accessibility of contents to large
groups of people, and the existence of clear reciprocal directedness, and,
inherently, social interaction. In this subchapter, I have discussed interac-
tions by touching upon entitlement based on tie strength,
­institutionalization of certain habits, granting face for strong ties, and
implicit, allusive messages based on previous experience. All of them are,
in one way or another, filtered through reflection. None of the users men-
tion getting carried away, engaging in a spontaneous interaction, and
sharing an experience with people with whom they otherwise feel strongly
connected. There is no immersion in a flow of a common here and now.
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    125

Weak Ties and Public Interactions

As some of the interview excerpts in the section on public interactions
between strong ties show, the same type of interactions rarely appears
between weaker ties. Most of the users stated they are reluctant in estab-
lishing public interactions with users with whom they do not feel strongly
bonded. Above, I have explored the issues of entitlement, previous shared
experience on which new interactions develop, and collaborative effort of
strong ties to construct an imaginary for weaker ties. The lack of all these
mechanisms means direct interactions with weak ties on Facebook public
posts are rather improbable. There are, however, exceptions. One of them
is the action of liking posts even for weak ties. Although most interview-
ees mentioned the strength of the tie as a central factor in initiating an
interaction, and they associated different tie strengths with different feed-
backs, the threshold on which they give themselves a green light to inter-
act one way or another is different. And as they have affirmed, a comment
is typically regarded as an appropriate interaction for a strong tie, whereas
a like is the perceived lowest form of interacting. So, in this subchapter,
the focus will fall mostly on meanings of likes, but other public interac-
tions between weak ties will be analyzed to the extent to which respon-
dents talk about them.
One of the main aspects that need to be acknowledged in relation to
exchanges between weak ties is the institutionalization of interaction
habits, which is perhaps more frequent and pronounced than in public
interactions with strong ties.

Sometimes I like things just to be polite. I always like it when someone

posts a picture or an album of their kid or from their graduation, their
wedding or something that I think is important for them, even if I am not
impressed necessarily. Now if they keep posting things about it, I won’t like
if every time, but still… Then, I sometimes wait for something nice enough
to like in the posts of others, just because they always like my things or
because I want to maintain a relationship with them. (SB26)

In this example, the subject talks about the meaning she attributes to
her likes for public posts by weak ties and what she intends to communicate
126  G.-I. Ivana

by the action of liking. On the one hand, there is the issue to which she
refers as politeness and which is a form of institutionalization (Berger and
Luckman 1966, pp. 74–75). In the interaction posting/liking posts related
to important life events irrespective of tie strength with the author, the part
each participant plays has become habitualized and has begun being recip-
rocally typified, just as the participants themselves are reciprocally typified
as well. Moreover, it is interesting to notice the level of generality and the
pervasiveness of this institutionalized habit, since observation of Facebook
pages has shown that posts with this type of content are constantly the ones
receiving most feedback.
Another topic the interviewee above touches upon is the use of feed-
back for maintaining certain ties at certain levels of strength. This shows
that the connection between tie strength and its indicators in interaction
is not unidirectional. While the strength of the tie has an important
impact on decisions related to interactions (online as much as offline),
the users are also aware of the fact that the other will calibrate his/her
understanding of tie strength according to indicators taken from the
interaction. Thus, from this perspective, interactions become a tool in the
negotiation of the strength of the tie. In support of this idea, another
respondent tells the following story:

It’s related to girlfriends (laughs) with whom I had a good relationship and
then sometimes I think maybe once in 3 months, I remember her and I go
to her wall and take a look, I like some of their pictures or whatever. They
do the same. It’s interesting because it’s kind of a let’s say, online Facebook
relationship. These people, or some of them, are now living abroad and it’s
a way of still getting in touch with them without having the necessity of
sending them a message or to get into their lives again. (SB13)

In this case, the respondent decided on a very precise level of closeness

with the other: he wants to communicate that he still feels bonded to her,
despite their breakup and despite the geographical distance. At the same
time, he feels sending them a message and initiating a full-blown interac-
tion would be a way of entering their lives again, or, in other words, it
would indicate a level of closeness or desired closeness on his side that he
does not want to convey. So, the action of giving a like in itself, no matter
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    127

for what content, is invested with the whole meaning related to the
strength of the current tie from the perspective of the interviewee. In a
similar vein, another user states:

INT: But when you have a romantic interest in someone, do you check
their profiles more?/ SB19: Yes! Absolutely! You go on his profile more
often; you are more attentive to what he posts and maybe give them more
likes. (SB19—translated from Spanish)

Here, the dimension of negotiation of tie strength through the action

of giving feedback is also present. However, the tie SB19 has with her
romantic interest might be weak in the moment when the interaction is
initiated, but it is projected to become strong. So, she interprets giving
more likes as a way of indicating her intended narrative about that tie. As
standardized or simplifying as this explanation might sound, the actual
negotiation of tie strength, as well as the level of disclosure of one’s hopes,
desires, projections, is very carefully nuanced, especially when an impor-
tant tie is at stake.

Well, there is a friend of mine who met a guy on Facebook and they lived in
different countries and she somehow believed that he was the love of her life
and that she had to meet him. I don’t even know how they ended up being
friends, but she started commenting on his photos and he didn’t say anything
for a while and she started regretting it and saying she made a fool of herself,
that she shouldn’t have done that, yeah. (…) He commented something back
at some point and she got really excited about it and commented again more
than she later thought she shouldn’t have. It was like a circle. (SB3)

The girl from the story commented on the pictures posted by someone
for whom she had a romantic interest, in order to signal her intention of
strengthening the tie. She is acting mainly according to her own desired
closeness, but also on the evaluation of the actual closeness, which is very
strongly based on the imaginary about the other’s view. When the man
with whom she had been trying to strengthen the connection does not
answer, she reads that as an ideal weak tie on his part and a misevaluation
on hers. Moreover, she is feeling exposed and embarrassed by this asym-
metry in desires between herself and the other.
128  G.-I. Ivana

General Public Debates

General debates are a theme I have briefly approached when talking about
public interactions between strong ties. Then I have emphasized that the
publication of certain contents, particularly less personally charged ones,
minimizes the role of tie strength in the decision of engaging in a debate.
When the information posted is, for instance, a newspaper article, which
already had public status and was accessible to anyone, the other users do
not feel like they learned about a content that was not meant for them
and they would have never known about it if it were not for that context.
So, in this section, I will focus on users’ depictions of public interactions
in situations where the strength of the tie was not mentioned as an ele-
ment in the construction of meaning. Although this is not a very frequent
occurrence, the interviewees who did approach the theme of public
debates had a very well-defined attitude in relation to them:

Once, I posted something that I knew would be controversial. I come from

a Muslim family, but I am not religious and once I posted an article that I
liked. It was something like 10 reasons why you shouldn’t be religious. I
knew my sister, who is very, very religious, would be offended by it and
have a reaction. And she did. But we started talking and in the end we had
a great conversation about it. It took me around 20 minutes only to write
one reply and we had many, I think put together it would have been a
conversation for 3 or 4 hours, but on Facebook we wrote every day and it
lasted about a week. It was public, under my original post. But I think we
could have never had that conversation face to face. Because on Facebook
you had the time to read everything she wrote, think of every argument,
say I agree with this, I don’t agree with that, think about what you want to
say. Face to face we probably would have said a few sentences, disagreed,
gotten angry and that would have been it. (SB2)

In this quotation, the interviewee mentions that his debate was with
his sister, but he does not refer to the strength of their tie in particular.
Instead, his focus is on the unfolding of the actual debate. One of the
interesting affirmations to keep in mind from this fragment is It took me
around 20 minutes only to write one reply. The reason why this sentence is
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    129

important is its relation to the subject’s lived experience and his here and
now. If we are to imagine for a moment a person involved in a heated
debate, it seems very improbable that they would later describe it in terms
of conventionally measured temporality. Using again Bergson’s (1910)
distinction between time-space world and durée, this sentence displays
an anchoring in time-space world, whereas immersion in the experience
of debating with someone face to face could unfold only in durée. At the
same time, one could say, following Schütz (1976), that while the experi-
ence could have been lived in durée, the subsequent typifications and
filtering through reflexivity are the reasons why this representation of the
story is made from the standpoint of a time-space world. Yet, the latter
explanation about the ways in which the experience in itself had been
different from a face-to-face debate leaves less room for alternative inter-
pretations. The subject explains the reflection on the other’s words that
went into his every reply and that would have not been employed face to
face. The fact that they would have gotten angry would be precisely that
common experience of the other and with the other in the same world
within reach, an experience in which the reflective processes would be
latent and the living of togetherness in durée would remain the main
focus of the interactant. In elaborating on this issue, the respondent adds:

Like in a conversation you might end up saying contradictory things,

maybe someone convinces you of part of what they are saying, but if you
do that on Facebook, people point out to you that you re contradicting
yourself. (…) Like when you are talking to someone and you say something
is true and they say the opposite and they just take out they phone and start
to look it up on the Internet to see who is right. That really annoys me. I
don’t care who is right. We were having a conversation here. (SB2)

This quotation emphasizes the previous point about lack of flow, on

the one hand, and increased reflectivity, on the other, that the subject has
noticed in Facebook public debates. For instance, the problem of contra-
dicting oneself in the course of a conversation is typical of the now where,
as Schütz (1970) was saying, the subject cannot experience him/herself.
That can only happen in modo preterito, when stepping out of the now
and turning one’s attention towards just now. Then, the example about
130  G.-I. Ivana

someone taking out their phone and searching for certain information
might seem out of context, but it refers to the same type of break in the
flow of experience of the interaction.
One of the main factors influencing this issue is, of course, spatial, but
particularly temporal distance. As the interviewee points out, the conver-
sation did not take place at the same pace as a face-to-face debate, but
spread over a week, which means the interaction was asynchronous. As a
result, in order to post each reply, the user has to construct an imaginary
of the copresence with the other and write what they would say. However,
in doing so, he also gets the opportunity to break himself out of that
imagined flow and reflect on how it would look, how the other would
interpret it, would one word be too strong. For this reason, I argue that
not even in the moment of maximum immersion in the interaction,
when writing his contribution to the conversation, the user is still not
experiencing an undisrupted flow. What remains is an addressed exchange
of information which is reflected upon and which can lead to particular
evaluations and reflections, be they of the other subject or of exterior
attributes and situations.
Another respondent talks about public debates from a different
perspective:

I think the debates on Facebook can get too intense, because people can
just go and say a lot of shit because they wouldn’t meet each other, it’s not
the same as being face to face. You can just say whatever you want and it
wouldn’t have any consequence, or it would but I discovered that some
people are limitless on Facebook. They would just go and write anything. I
remember this story about a man who was leaving from a Latin American
country and wanted to go and find a better life. He fell from a boat and
died. It was a horrible story and I remember a woman commenting some-
thing like “Yes, one less of these emigrants.” It was really heartless and it’s
the sort of thing I am not sure she could have said it in a public space, face
to face with other people. (…) I would be interested in meeting this per-
son, but I would go with a lot of prejudice about her from the start. (SB34)

Although the main topic here is not the strength of the tie, the fact that
in this case, unlike in the one above, the respondent is referring to public
debates between users who are not bonded in any way whatsoever remains
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    131

relevant. Namely, this lack of a tie means that any typification the other
would have based on an interaction would not contribute to a particular
existent impression about them. In colloquial terms, there are no con-
cerns about the other changing his/her opinion or how that would affect
their relationship, because there is no opinion to change and no relation-
ship to be affected. Moreover, the author of the comments is not con-
fronted with many of the consequences of the new impressions that
emerge from interactions in other contexts (not even the discomfort of
being looked upon with disapproval). Indeed, this configuration of social
interactions, where the impressions constructed by others have no impact
on an individual who is part of an interaction, encourages certain liber-
ties. At the same time, the respondent quoted above does not take into
account the access of that person’s contacts to her comments in public
debates. This can result in a reshaping of the existing/potential tie by the
overviewers who are part of her life, without her awareness. Thus, the
evaluative dimension may be present even in the most tieless public
debates, as what one writes publicly is available for those with whom that
person is connected.
At the same time, when analyzing this quotation, I have insisted upon
evaluations, whereas in the previous, I focused mainly on the discrepancy
between lived and reflected-upon experience. The reason for this shift is
the respondent’s perspective regarding the debate. If the former subject
was referring to a public interaction to which he had participated with his
sister and representing to me his experience of that episode, the latter
talks about an interaction she witnessed as an observer and thus had no
access to the lived experience of the interactors. However, she had a reflec-
tive stance and made sense of the others based on it, which is just as
important, given the publicness of the interaction.

Private Interactions
Up to now, I have examined meaning construction within ties on the
basis of public contents in (1) non-interactional exchanges and (2) social
interactions, respectively, but we must not forget that (3) interactions also
occur in private settings. By this, I am referring to Facebook chatting,
132  G.-I. Ivana

the option of selecting one or more people from one’s contact list and
sending them messages to which others do not have access. As discussed
in the beginning of Chap. 3, these interactions are visually organized in
a way that does not establish a different status for the initiator than the
other participants and, thus, do not have a host. They are constructed,
from this point of view, as a common space for the interactors.
Nevertheless, the ways in which it is experienced by the users are not
unproblematically derived from that architecture:

I don’t know. I just don’t like Facebook chat. I just go on Facebook if I want
to see something, have some news about my friends or related to the events
or groups that I’ve created, so see where I am supposed to go, but person-
ally I don’t like to speak through this chat and to get in touch with my
friends using this chat. (SB13)
Chat, the private chat, the little window, I was using that, but not any-
more. I don’t know why. Maybe I don’t have the time, because scrolling
down is just a couple of minutes, maybe 5 minutes, but keeping up a con-
versation with some friend, you need some time to do that. The thing is
that when I get home, I am too tired and I don’t want to open the com-
puter again. Now I check my Facebook page a couple of minutes on the
iPad, but I don’t chat. (SB10)

The quotation from SB13 is consistent with the above-discussed words

of SB2, who was noticing the lack of flow in Facebook public debates.
Although this subject does not explicitly refer to this problem, he men-
tions the most common ways in which he uses Facebook and none of
them include an experience of lived durée with and of the others. He goes
there to know of his friends, but not to experience something with them.
And it is this understanding of Facebook that is incompatible with chat-
ting, where the aim is constructing a moment of togetherness.
The second fragment, coming from SB10, underlines another dimen-
sion of the experience of interacting privately on Facebook. Namely, the
previous commitment it requires. The subject explains she used to chat,
so, unlike SB13 above, she does not perceive an incompatibility between
these conditions and experiencing an interaction with the other in lived
durée. However, she refers to the interaction in terms of objective time,
because of the previous reflection it requires. In interactions occurring in
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    133

the same here and now, the unfolding of different situations in different
contexts often leads to interactions without the thought of interaction
having been contemplated in advance. In order to initiate a Facebook
private interaction, the subject has to reflect upon the idea of spending a
given amount of time interacting with the other and he/she has to decide
for doing that. It is an interaction into which subjects cannot get carried
away. Once it has been initiated, the interactors may become immersed
in a common here and now, but it is a here and now in which they must
engage willingly and deliberately. Having said this, I will now move into
the particularities of private interactions, taking into account the strength
of the underlying tie between the interactors.

Strong Ties and Private Interactions

As the theory of the niche (Dimmick 2003) highlights, different interper-

sonal media compete to become the preferred means of communicating.
Furthermore, as Dimmick et al. (2011) would point out, these niches are
associated with particular tie strengths (e.g. close bonds—cell phone use,
e-mails—all types of bonds except significant others, etc.). In this case,
the niche effect is not only noticeable on different social networking
­platforms but in different functions of the same network. Namely, the
chatting option constitutes a niche, typically correlated with particular
bonds.
Not many of the respondents declared they used Facebook in engaging
in private interactions. Nevertheless, those who did mentioned, just like
in the case of public interactions, that the strength of the tie they have
with the other is one of the main factors influencing their chatting habits.
To illustrate, let us look at an example:

I would probably chat with the people I am interested in getting in contact

with. It would mostly be people around me. Like when I am in city A., I
would mostly chat with the people that I am going to meet or just met,
but, yeah, right now I realize that the people I chat with on Facebook are
my real friends and my close friends, so… Also, if you don’t know the per-
son that well, it’s weird to go and say “hey, what’s up?”. People I know well,
I could chat with them for half an hour and just have fun. (SB34)
134  G.-I. Ivana

The interviewee points out that she is more likely to chat with the
people she meets often. I believe that has two explanations. On the one
hand, the constant interaction favors a strengthening of the tie, which, in
turn, results in a similar entitlement as in public interactions. On the
other hand, the frequent interactions mean the construction of some
common experiences, common plots, and common plans and projec-
tions for future. Not all of these will be closed when the face-to-face
interaction ends. Then, the triggers necessary for the initiation of a pri-
vate interaction on Facebook chat are more likely to appear. A practical
issue about the meeting planned for the next day, curiosity about what
happened the night before, after one left the party, some information one
knows the other was looking for, and so on can provide incentives for
interaction. This solves to a great extent the issue approached above,
about the necessity of a previous decision to interact, rather than being in
a course of that leads to interaction.
The other aspect the respondent focuses on is the interaction with very
close ties, her real and close friends. By saying she could chat with them for
half an hour and have fun, the user confirms that the necessary element
for the enjoyment of chatting is immersion in the interaction irrespective
of its conditions. This is visible in the mention about the extensive char-
acter of the chat and in the representation of that chat as an experience,
as “having fun”. Last but not least, SB34 refers to the importance of a
strong tie for this experience to be initiated. Since these interactions have
to be decided upon, starting one without having a previously close tie
involves the risk of having the other interpret that as an indicator of a
desired strengthening of the current tie. Moreover, because of the scarcity
of indicators that are otherwise used in interaction, launching a conversa-
tion on Facebook chat with a weak tie can be, in some respects, difficult
to handle. In a close tie, even with a lack of other indicators, the other has
already made an impression on the subject and new experiences will be
lived in light of that impressions: “I am sure he is joking, although I can-
not see the expression on his/her face, because this is something he/she
always jokes about”. Without the familiarity of a close tie, one might get
lost in a Facebook conversation, or he/she might get so tangled in the
interpretative process that a reflective stance takes over from the lived
experience in durée.
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    135

Another interviewee also approaches this topic:

I am a heavy chatter. A few years ago I burnt a soup (yes, you can burn a
soup) by forgetting about it for 5 hours because of chatting. There are 3
people I chat with constantly, 2 of them daily even. Sometimes it’s easier
with voice calls, but other times you start it by writing and you just keep
going that way. I didn’t use Facebook chat because I felt it was too out in
the open, like someone could read it, although I knew nobody could. It felt
unsafe, but a friend insisted and she was always on Facebook and never on
my old chat, so I also moved. Now I got used to it. (SB26)

In the same vein as the interviewee above, SB26 also only chats with
very close ties. To a greater extent than the quotation above, her words
show the immersion in the here and now of the interaction, with all the
consequences that have on the here and now of her physical world within
reach. Yet, I have chosen to include this fragment especially for the way
in which the user depicts her experience with Facebook chatting in par-
ticular. In my interpretation, an explanation for the user’s concern with
unwanted disclosure comes from her understanding of Facebook as a
whole. Since it is a social space constructed through the actualization of
certain possibilities by what users do, those users cannot be taken out of
the conceptualization of that space. The presence of those users, testified
by the contents they share, the interactions they engage in, the feedback
they give occasionally, cannot be subtracted, because they are Facebook.
That is what that space is made of. In this context, the separation, within
this space, of private interactions, needed to be rationalized by the inter-
viewee in order to be accepted.

Weak Ties and Private Interactions

In this final section of the chapter on social interactions unfolding on

Facebook, I will explore private interactions occurring between users who
are weakly tied. Despite most of the interviewees having stated that, if
they chat, they do it with those with whom they are closely bonded, there
have been a number of exceptions. One of them in particular I think is
interesting to analyze:
136  G.-I. Ivana

If she thought that I was stalking her Facebook (laughs)… Usually I try to
find a reason to talk to them. I think saying to someone “Hi! I was brows-
ing through your pictures”, I think that is stalking. If I have a pretext, like
for example a friend of mine, also from the exchange period, she was now
living in another city and she was studying a master in logistics, and I sent
her a message, like “how’s it going?”, but only because she posted a message
that was meant more for everyone. INT: So you feel sometimes like you’re
not the target audience? SB15: Yeah, I do that, for example with the likes.
I would like a picture if I think that person would be comfortable with me
looking at it. If not, I wouldn’t click like because I would worry that person
will think I was stalking because that was not meant for me. (SB15)

This is a fragment from an interview where a user talks about his

reserves in initiating a private interaction with an old acquaintance about
whom he is curious to know more. Despite that, he looks for a reason to
talk to her, and place her, through his discourse in a category with others
with whom he has a tie of a similar strength (he needs a reason to talk to
them). At the foundation of this line of thinking lies his assumption
about how initiating a private interaction with the other would be read
by her as an indicator of him heading in the direction of a stronger tie.
The interviewee feels the other perceives the tie as not very strong, but he
also estimates she evaluates that lack of closeness positively, thus not
expecting him to look at the pictures she posts or the information she
shares. Then, in order to mask the decision of initiating a conversation
(that he feels would be interpreted in a way with which he is not comfort-
able), he constructs it as a reply. In order to do that, the subject needs a
hook, a content that he can construct as being addressed to him, even if
it is addressed to him among others and not to him personally. In this
example, the hook is a piece of information she shares publicly about her
studies.
In all this unfolding of the interaction and in the projections that pre-
cede it in the mind of the initiator, it is interesting to notice that the
subject is not trying to communicate a distorted message about his
account of the strength of the tie. He is trying to send a message that
would convey his actual intentions about the tie, but he is concerned his
spontaneous way of engaging in the interaction would come across
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    137

wrongly. Thus, he is willing to censor his behavior, in order to respect

what he regards as the already solidified associations between certain
behaviors and certain tie strengths.
To summarize, I will briefly go through the main points of the argu-
mentation in this chapter. The main topic discussed here has been
meaning construction in social interactions unfolding on Facebook. I
have divided social interactions into two categories: public social inter-
actions (taking place on users’ walls, in feedbacks, in debates, etc.) and
private social interactions (the chatting option). In each of those, I refer
separately to the meaning construction when those interacting are in a
strong or weak tie. Although I have mentioned this before, I feel it is
important to emphasize that I do not understand weak ties and strong
ties as a dichotomy, but as a continuum. Thus, the clear-cut distinction
is only done for analytical purposes. I am not claiming that meaning is
constructed in one way for those who are strongly tied and in another
way within weak bonds, but that the stronger the tie, the more certain
elements will prevail in the meaning construction, whereas in weaker
ties other factors will have more weight in the meaning construction.
Having said this, I will go back to the outline of the argument. Public
social interactions are more likely to occur between strong ties as a con-
sequence of a few patterns in the interpretative process. Namely, the
most often discussed and the most insisted upon in the interviews is
entitlement. By this term, I am referring to the underlying assumption
of contacts overviewing public contents about the inexplicit address-
ability of those contents and the evaluation about whether they were
among the ones addressed, based on the strength of the tie. Besides
entitlement, another element influencing public social interaction is
institutionalization of Facebook actions and behaviors in relation with
tie strength. Certain interaction practices have become habitualized
and they have been associated with interactants who read each other
according to how close their bond is (“I always like what my best friend
posts”). Furthermore, public interactions are also shaped by the con-
tents themselves, because certain information is likely to be interpreted
as having been shared with only close friends (although publically),
while other contents are general enough to allow contributions from
weak ties. Another aspect of public interactions between strong ties is
138  G.-I. Ivana

the use of the close tie in a collective effort (of the subject and his/her
close ones) to construct an imaginary about their common world within
reach or the world within reach of one of them for the weaker ties who
are overviewing the interaction on Facebook. Last but not least, behind
public interaction between strong ties, there are a previously existing
togetherness, complicity, and shared past experience. On that basis,
interviewees talk about the occurrence of interactions that come as a
continuation of that past experience.
In the following section of this chapter, I talk about public interac-
tions occurring between weak ties. In relation to this topic, two issues
have been approached. One of them is the institutionalization of the
interaction, which describes a process similar to the one occurring
between strong ties, but which is used more carefully in this instance,
as the threshold of what is acceptable is lower in weaker ties. The other
is the negotiation of a future strengthening of the tie on the basis of
public interactions with users with whom the subject is currently loosely
bonded. In the last part of the argument about public interactions, I
have referred to the interactions in the representation of which the
interviewees have not talked about tie strength. These were public
debates. In relation to this theme, I have insisted upon (a) the experi-
ence of lived durée and the involvement of a posteriori reflectivity, on
the one hand, and (b) upon the typifications generated by the overview-
ers, on the other.
In the second half of the chapter, the focus shifted to private interac-
tions. Not surprisingly, the statements of the users support the conclu-
sion that private interactions are also more likely to occur when the
underlying tie is stronger. Some of the main ideas discussed in this sec-
tion have been the deliberation about engaging in an interaction and the
ways in which strong ties are more probable to encourage the decision of
initiating an interaction. The immersion in a common here and now of
the interaction has also been tackled, especially in connection with strong
ties. On what private interactions between weak ties are concerned, the
emphasis fell on the ways in which the initiator of the interaction man-
ages the assumed interpretations of the other about the meaning of that
private conversation.
   Meaning Construction in Online Social Interactions    139

References
Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckman. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality.
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Bergson, Henri. 1910. Time and Free Will. An Essay on the Immediate Data of
Consciousness. Trans. F.L. Pogson. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Dimmick, John. 2003. Media Competition and Coexistence: The Theory of the
Niche. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Dimmick, John, John Christian Feaster, and Artemio Ramirez. 2011. The
Niches of Interpersonal Media: Relationships in Time and Space. New Media
& Society 13 (8): 1265–1282.
Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays On Face-to-Face behavior.
New York: Anchor Books.
Schütz, Alfred. 1970. In Alfred Schütz on Phenomenology and Social Relations, ed.
Helmut R. Wagner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 1976. Collected Papers II: Studies in Social Theory. The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff.
 6
Social Networking and Emotions

Emotions are part of the ways in which we relate to the world in a mean-
ingful way (Scheff 1990; Ahmed 2001; Barbalet 2002; Collins 2004), and
they are consequently a key element in carrying out a relational analysis of
any social phenomenon. On the one hand, utter emotionlessness in social
relations is unattainable—emotions exist and shape thoughts, behaviors,
and interactions. On the other hand, structural characteristics of social
actors and their relations favor the rise of certain emotions. Furthermore,
the concrete unfolding of social encounters, with inherent norms and
expectations, is deeply connected with particular emotions in various
contexts. Thus, there is no theoretical reason for choosing to discuss emo-
tions separately from any other aspects of the link between Facebook and
the underlying social bonds. Yet, for the sake of clarity and systematiza-
tion, the current chapter is dedicated mainly to accounts of emotions
Facebook users shared with me. As emotions are not always in the fore-
ground of one’s conscious reflection upon their experience, I have chosen
to ask interviewees openly about situations when Facebooking made them
joyful, sad, angry, proud, or ashamed. And if emotions had not always
been spontaneously part of their narratives, open questions revealed the
emotional component to be not only present, but also fairly strong.

© The Author(s) 2018 141

G.-I. Ivana, Social Ties in Online Networking, Palgrave Studies in
Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71595-7_6
142  G.-I. Ivana

Pride and Shame
Scheff (2014) argues that a pride/shame system functions in most social
interactions. He traces this idea back to two main sources: Goffman with
his “esprit de finesse” (intuition, richness of details, etc.) and Cooley with
his “esprit de geométrie” (analytic and synthetic power). The insights
about pride and shame and their social roots and ramifications which lay
at the intersection between the two interactionist scholars are what Scheff
calls the Goffman-Cooley conjecture. In this context, of particular rele-
vance is the relational rather than individual character of both pride and
shame. The risk of shame which Goffman (1959) identified in all cases of
interaction is not simply derived from one’s own lack of confidence or
anxiety, but from what Cooley (1964) named the looking glass self, a
constant estimation of the other interactant’s perspective. As Scheff also
remarks, Mead (2015) opened the way to these ideas through his elabora-
tion on role taking as the staggeringly fast process of imagining oneself in
the other’s position and returning to one’s own to come up with responses
in face-to-face communication. Role taking (in the sense Mead uses it) is
at the core of both pride and shame, and more widely self-administered
social control. Given the social implications of these two emotions, as
well as their pervasiveness, I begin this discussion by referring to pride
and shame. Furthermore, it is not accidental that these are also some of
the emotions Facebook users mention most often. However, the fast role
taking to which Mead was referring belonged to the realm of face-to-face
interaction. It also makes sense to expand it to synchronous online inter-
actions. Yet the different pace of non-synchronous interactions and inter-
actionless (or unaddressed) Facebook posts throws Mead’s role taking and
Cooley/Goffman’s views on emotions like pride and shame into a differ-
ent dynamic. And it is important to note users’ mentions of shame and
particularly pride were typically made in contexts where direct interac-
tions were missing. Namely, pride appeared in discussions about posts on
one’s wall, mainly as a result of their public character. When asked about
her most recent public posts, an interviewee mentioned she posted a song
by a band called Tricky. After my inquiries about the reasons behind her
action, the girl states:
   Social Networking and Emotions    143

Tricky of which I just found out will come to Optimus, the festival I’m also
going to in July, yay, and yes, everybody must know it (laughs). No, I am
joking right now, but you know, it is a reason of pride to go to a festival
where I’ll see a band I want to see so much. (SB1)

Here, it is made explicit that pride relates to everybody acknowledging

an accomplishment and this necessarily relies on a general understanding
of what constitutes an accomplishment. Thus, the interviewee must have
taken the role of the other, or must have seen her own post through what
she presumed to be the eyes of the other, and expected it to gain admira-
tion. Yet, if in a face-to-face conversation the other is well established, in
the case of public posts it is not. Hence, instead of the role taking which
takes place in a traditional interactional act of communication, here there
is a generalized other, to use another of Mead’s terms or, as the inter-
viewee says, “everybody”. Also, it must be added that, as Scheff (2005)
points out, Cooley’s view on pride (since Goffman is more focused on
shame) is very much in line with Mead’s work, but at the same time valu-
able in its own right, especially for the inclusion of emotion. And this
intertwined cognition about the generalized other and emotion about
how they might read the user is exactly what pride seems to describe in
Facebook public posts. At the same time, I would add, the generalized
other which lays at the foundation of pride is also inextricably connected
with the normativity and social control that Goffman was exploring with
respect to shame. It is a crystallization, in one’s own understanding of
wider trends, societal values, and largely embraced norms, from her con-
tact with particular others. It is in this form of the imaginary of the gen-
eralized other that the user calibrates her compass about what is worthy
of pride and, one might add, what is worthy of being enjoyed as good
music in the first place.
However, the generalized other to whom this interviewee is referring
cannot be “everyone”. It is not the averaging of opinions and evaluations
from people with whom she came in contact that guides her. Rather, it is
a narrower other, a generically relevant other whose role she briefly takes
and who gives her the feeling of pride. It is the person she believes listens
to this sort of music or would be interested in going to said festival that
matters. To put it differently, her doing something which is in accordance
144  G.-I. Ivana

to the expectations of the subculture to which she hopes to belong is part

of the feeling of pride. Moreover, what is special on Facebook is the
apparent plunge into a nebula when posting something publicly. If in
face-to-face conversation pride may come from sharing something note-
worthy and receiving positive feedback for it, when posting, that is not an
option. Thus, what is actually highlighted is the fact that the very expec-
tation of a positive feedback from the other can be enough for pride to
develop, even before any act of communication is initiated. The inher-
ently and purely social character of how one decides what is deserving of
pride points once again to a social construction of values and norms
which long predates Facebook. Having said this, besides familiarity with
the social expectations of a particular group, which can make one feel
proud even before she shares her achievement with anyone, actual social
actors still matter. In the story above, it is not the same for the inter-
viewee whether she receives enthusiastic feedback or no feedback at all.
Despite their reactions coming after her pride has already taken shape,
they have the potential to confirm it or to deny it. At the same time, the
abovementioned notion of a non-individualized other, but one who is
nonetheless defined by particular characteristics, what I called the generi-
cally relevant other (simultaneously different from the generalized other
and from the particular other) connects this user’s pride with emotion
informed theories of identity (Stryker 2004). This is something to which
I will come back when analyzing feelings of belonging.
Another person mentions pride when trying to explain why she thinks
the social networking platform is so popular:

Anyway, I am under the impression that there is kind of a constant need of

showing those you know… or maybe it’s just me, of showing them not
necessarily what you’ve got, but that you take pride in what you do. This is
how I would explain the food photos or the check-ins which really have no
other purpose. They bring you no gain whatsoever; you simply want to
show where you are and what you do and who you do it with. I think in a
way you take pride in that, because you wouldn’t hit “check in” in an ugly
place, but knowing you’re in a better restaurant or in a fancy club, then you
want to do it. That’s what I say (laughs). Oh, how stupid it sounds! It
sounds stupid, but that’s it in fact, the wish of showing those you know
how far you’ve gotten. (SB7)
   Social Networking and Emotions    145

In this quotation, there is, again, confirmation of the sociological per-

spective on pride. The importance of the others, of how one imagines
they are perceived from the outside, is fully revealed as this user talks
about what she finds is the very rationale of Facebooking. There is a
strongly relational thread here, as other people are in the foreground of
sharing information about what makes us proud. However, this person,
similarly to the one above, talks about “people you know”, rather than
friends or other close ties. In both examples, and in others, the external
entity to whom such information seems to be addressed is almost entirely
depersonified. Whether we speak of a generalized other, or a more spe-
cific relevant other, they still lack a face and a strong bond with the user.
The dummy of the other stands for criteria and narratives of success, for
tastes and lifestyles of certain social groups, and for the exigence required
in order to generate evaluations. If receiving information from ties of
various types and strengths was typically read with respect to the person
who posted it, the analysis of pride, which brings us mostly into what
users themselves share, highlights a different angle to the experience of
Facebooking. In the previous chapters, I had referred to the fact that with
weak ties reductions to ideal types are more likely than attempts at recon-
stituting the life flow of the absent other. When posting content available
to weak ties, users subject themselves to the same reductionist practice,
awaiting and embracing the typifications they are likely to receive. Yet,
beyond the cognitive elements, being matched up against an ideal type is
a reason for pride, if one believes they would be matched up against the
right ideal type. Thus, the often impersonal, non-interactional character
of public Facebook information sharing allows the gaze of another who is
farther away than in most other contexts, and who is likely to look at the
bigger picture of ideal types of individuals and their life trajectories.
Particularly in this quotation, the reference to pride about how far one
has come in life indicates the expected level of generality of the other and
of their evaluations. In this case, isolated events or achievements from
which one might ordinarily take pride are imagined to be put by the
other into a wider narrative. Then, being in what one might consider a
good restaurant might be a slight reason of pride in itself, but a more defi-
nite one in light of what it suggests about the user’s life.
146  G.-I. Ivana

Another aspect related to pride which was not common, but neverthe-
less appeared in a few conversations with users, is the division of plat-
forms according to content. More clearly, not everything that is worthy
of pride belongs on Facebook, as this platform is seen as (1) informal
(made mostly of friends, family, friendly acquaintances, or colleagues)
and (2) non-specialized (the people on Facebook are typically not a niche
audience). This specific flavor of the network has made one interviewee
define it as the place on the internet where grandmothers also fit in. In
the context of pride, another respondent who is a professional photogra-
pher states:

All kinds of communication I am very positive about, and sometimes I

post pictures just for fun, some funny stuff, with some sort of goal of com-
munication or receiving feedback, but not “look what a great picture I
made”. I use Flickr for that. (SB12)

Thus, when he derives his pride from a professional achievement, he

prefers using Flickr, precisely for its specialized character. In the same
vein, I argue, contents from platforms of academic research, like
ResearchGate or Academia, rarely overlap with what is shared on
Facebook, despite pride being a factor in decisions about public sharing.
When asked about shameful Facebook-related situations, most users
did not have anything in particular to share. They did not negate the risk
of shame, and they mentioned they could see, for instance, how one
being tagged in an image where they are obviously drunk would be
embarrassing. Several interviewees also mentioned the issue of publishing
sexual images while having one’s parents’ in the list of contacts as embar-
rassing. Here, we must observe, strong ties come back into the picture.
Pride was somewhat flexible with its audience; shame is not. One may be
proud of a particular achievement according to what they have grown to
consider desirable in general and in this case their pride may remain
unshaken irrespective of those with whom they share it. Embarrassment,
on the other hand, depends more often than not on the link with the
particular other towards whom one is embarrassed. While we can think
of actions which are embarrassing in any context, they are rare. Being
drunk with friends or being sexual with a romantic partner is deemed
   Social Networking and Emotions    147

socially acceptable. Thus, in the case of shame, more than pride, the nor-
mativity within a given type of bond is central. An argument has been
made that the importance of individual others, like parents or acquain-
tances, in the development of shame is culturally dependent (Cohen and
Nisbett 1994; Cross et al. 2014; Gunsoy et al. 2015), with so-called cul-
tures of honor valuing external input more. While there is definite sub-
stance to this argument, it must be pointed out that beyond differences
in magnitude and in the specifics of what is shameful, the social mecha-
nisms which provoke shame and the role of the others in reinforcing
those mechanisms remain common threads in different cultural settings.
The importance of particular ties in defining what is shameful to do on
Facebook brings us close to an aspect which was obscured (but not
absent) in the above mentions of a generic relevant other: social structure.
Structure manifests itself in the shape taken by the imaginary of the eval-
uation from the other, according to who that person is and the type of
bond the user has with them. As I have already mentioned throughout
the previous chapters, bonds do not only refer to varying distances
between social actors but also to different types of relations between
them. These differences in type of bonds are dependent, among other
things, on disparities of status or power. Kemper explains it in the follow-
ing words: “The fundamental theorem of the power-status approach to
emotions is that a very large class of human emotions results from real,
anticipated, imagined, or recollected outcomes of social relations”
(Kemper 1978, 1991). With respect to shame, what is significant is not
the power (understood of one’s ability of forcing their way upon others),
as much as the status (one’s ability to become respected, convincing, val-
ued enough for others to willingly obey) of the evaluator in the eyes of
the evaluated. The appraisal of one with a high perceived status has more
weight for the receiver. It is also more likely to be negative, given the
other’s lack of social constraints and even the legitimacy of critical judg-
ment conferred by status. Bearing this in mind, the mention of parents,
or more rarely, teachers as being in one’s Facebook circle, highlights the
hierarchy existing within certain bonds and the emotional component
which is intertwined with the meaning of that hierarchy. In this sense, the
somewhat rare appearance of narratives of shame as compared to narra-
tives of pride from Facebook users is due to the horizontality of the
148  G.-I. Ivana

networks of ties within the platform. Going back to the brief interview
excerpts about pride from above, they can also be read in terms of status.
Namely, information is shared by Facebook users (be it about cultural
events attended, check-ins, family pictures, etc.) in an attempt to increase
their own status, and it is precisely the assumption of a better status which
generates pride. Thus, we can speak of a more or less general other who
stands for social norms and expectations, and directs the subject with
respect to what they may be proud or ashamed about. We can also speak
of the specific other with whom one engages in interaction regularly, who
has certain structural features, like power and status, and who brings
nuance and variation to the emotional scenery of different concrete con-
texts and bonds. My own discussions with Facebook users indicate they
relate pride more to the generally relevant other and shame to the specific
other. However, this is a tendency, rather than a clear-cut separation.
Another way in which shame narratives seem to differ from pride nar-
ratives is the treatment of the body. If pride is sometimes drawn from
body image or scrupulous body management (workouts or diets), it also
relies on various other grounds. Shame, on the other hand, is overwhelm-
ingly directed towards the body, in the shape of aesthetics, intoxication,
but most of all sexuality. With respect to this, it has been documented
that self-surveillance increases the likelihood of shame (Grabe et al. 2007;
Quinn et al. 2006; Manago et al. 2015). A sociological perspective on
such social psychological findings would highlight it is the underlying
constant concern for social evaluations and the desire to avoid shame that
leads to self-surveillance from the beginning. However, this is a vicious
circle, since the more one worries about the possibility of being shamed,
the more self-conscious and ultimately ashamed they are likely to be.
Regarding social networking, Manago et al. (2015) indicate that usage
correlates with increases in feelings of shame for everyone, but particu-
larly for girls. This is not something I have encountered explicitly in my
fieldwork. However, two interviewees, both girls, have mentioned choos-
ing their outfits for social occasions on the basis of how they would look
in Facebook pictures and whether they already have public pictures
dressed the same way. While neither of them linked this practice with
feelings of shame, the increase in self-surveillance is clear. It is also under-
standable, since it comes from the awareness of increased surveillance
   Social Networking and Emotions    149

from the outside, given the public, static, ever accessible character of
Facebook posts. Others (at least a predetermined group of others) may
always take a look, they may even come back to old contents while brows-
ing randomly, and they may take their time noticing details in ways
which are not acceptable in direct interaction. Facebook favors lateral
surveillance (Andrejevic 2006; Ivana 2013). Knowing it and wishing to
control the outcomes inevitably leads to increased self-surveillance.
In my discussions with users as well, the aspect emphasized regarding
shame was control, being vigilant, and making sure the potential for cir-
cumstances of shame is reduced to a minimum. One way of doing so has
reportedly been the Facebook option of checking tags posted by others
before allowing them to be public on their walls. This interest in avoiding
shameful situations is perfectly in line with Goffman’s argument about
the pervasiveness of shame and the constant risk which haunts social
interactions (and here even non-interactional information sharing).
Shame as the emotion most characteristic to social rejection is also linked
to bullying. In such cases, ways of bypassing the control mechanisms
devised by Facebook can be found (e.g. not tagging the bullied person, as
all common friends of the bully and the bullied have access to the infor-
mation anyway). With respect to this matter, one interviewee, who is also
a parent, says:

I have seen it happening in other people’s profiles, for instance, when

someone posts a photo of you. That is really tricky, because you don’t have
to agree necessarily that this picture is on the internet, or on a public profile
and this is an area of… informal negotiation, or whatever you call it, that
worries me a little bit. But I am more worried about my daughter than
about myself (…) She is just 2, but in the future I am more worried about
her, because I need to educate her and to teach her how to use it. (SB11)

Here, the emotional spectrum is more complex. Besides the possible

shame one risks, there is also the concern for those around. The state of
being worried strongly resembles pure anxiety, which can be defined in
the following terms: “When there is an imbalance in the power r­ elationship
between actors, the one with relatively less power is vulnerable to the
encroachments of the other, and the anticipation that other will use
150  G.-I. Ivana

power is the core of anxiety. Whether or not the anxiety is of pathological

intensity and related to repressed experiences, the relational context is
one of power relations” (Kemper 1978). The lack of control over what
would happen in his daughter’s social circle is transparent from the words
of the interviewee. In this case, Facebook simply fulfills the role of any
other social arena, and its importance is enhanced by its publicness and
visibility, that is to say by the “presence” of others. What is interesting in
this fragment, I argue, is the fact that he does not speak of typical anxiety,
but of concern for another. This emotion captures the strength of his
bond with his daughter, his wish to protect her, on the one hand, and his
anxiety about the potential unfolding of her interactions with others, on
the other hand. Furthermore, the anxiety he experiences when projecting
such scenarios does not need to be mediated by him empathically putting
himself in the role of his daughter; it affects him directly by virtue of the
bond he already has with his daughter. Here, again, that which may hap-
pen online is relevant for one’s emotional experience by virtue of stable
bonds with brief online manifestations.
Another aspect which must be pointed out in the analysis of pride and
shame is that online pride is associated with that which happens in one’s
offline world and the action of sharing/displaying it on Facebook is con-
ditioned by the pride one feels regarding a certain achievement. Shame,
on the other hand, is the consequence of posting. That is not to say that
pride and shame are moved by different mechanisms, but that when
shame appears (as pride would) from projections made prior to posting,
it results in inhibiting the post. This explains why narratives of shame are
not as frequent: they function as quiet barriers which suppress one’s
intentions of becoming visible in the online social environment. Put sim-
ply, those who are ashamed to post something will not do it; those who
were not ashamed to post it will probably not be ashamed after having
done it either. Thus, the only situations when shame is really likely to be
present are misjudged actions of Facebook display, or users sharing con-
tents without calculating the shaming risks of doing so. Alternatively,
when shame is caused by another, it may also be regarded as malevolent
rather than misjudged. To conclude, the emotions of pride and shame
can be found behind some of the central mechanisms for the public
dimension of Facebooking. More precisely, pride lies at the core of most
   Social Networking and Emotions    151

positive incentives to manifest oneself publicly, while shame is tacitly and

discretely one of the negative regulators, which filters out what one
should not share, in light of their bonds with the other users.

Facebook Sharing of Emotions

There is a distinction between (a) emotions experienced as a result of
online occurrences (like being ashamed about something posted about
you) and (b) emotions producing online occurrences (like posting an
achievement because you feel proud of it) despite having been generated
offline. For instance, most interviewees agreed the content they publish
on the platform is strongly dependent on the emotions they are experi-
encing at the time. The typical examples include posting sad music,
changing profile pictures so that the expression on the face in the picture
mirrors their happy/melancholic/careless mood, or explicitly posting
about certain everyday life events and the emotional impact they have
had on the user. Psychology has already discussed at length the emotional
self-regulating role of listening to music and about strategies of mood
control (DeNora 1999; Thayer et al. 1994; Saarikallio 2011), but I argue
actions of sharing are different from pure self-regulation. It must be said
direct versus allusive posts regarding feelings are becoming more and
more preferred by the interviewees, as suggestions are often deemed
immature, transparent, or laughable. The following excerpt comes from a
user who, when asked about his views on factual versus openly emotional
posts, remembers having tried the latter:

INT: What about people who share emotional things, how they are feeling
or how their day was like or if they are depressed?
SB6: Oh, that’s ok. I don’t think it’s too much as long as it’s an honest
post, it’s ok, it’s who they are. Like for example I remember that once I
posted something like “I am sick and tired of NGO’s” because I was work-
ing on a project related to NGO’s and I had some difficulties interacting
with NGO’s. And I was actually sick and tired. So I said that on my wall,
and it was actually quite interesting, because some people started talking to
me, e-mailing me, messaging me, saying: “Hey! Are you ok? What I the
problem? Can I help you with something?”
152  G.-I. Ivana

INT: And had you expected that?

SB6: No, not really. That is what made it interesting.
INT: But generally, did they contact you in private, or did they post it
on your wall?
SB6: Some of them commented on my post, some of them messaged
me, some of them even called me (laughs)… the ones who work with
NGO’s or who are in the NGO sector. (SB6)

This fragment reveals both the emotional tableau which generates

posts and the emotions following the post, as in this case, they differ. The
initial emotion originated in a context entirely unrelated to Facebook.
The user felt “sick and tired”, which can be read as frustration coupled
with low emotional energy (Mazur and Lamb 1980; Kemper 1990). In
this circumstance, the social network represents only an outlet for the
emotion. Through the temporal and causal sequence of emotion—
Facebook action—this case is similar to the example above where pride
was the motor behind the girl posting about her festival attendance.
However, pride still needs confirmation or denial from those who receive
the post in order to be fully valid. This man’s emotions, on the other
hand, do not. Feeling sick and tired of a work-related situation is not
dependent on estimating evaluations from others. Rather, it is clear that
there is an underlying structural ground in which his emotion is anchored.
The lack of a power/high status position which would have allowed the
interviewee to impose his perspective in the interaction with the people
working in the NGO sector is at the basis of his emotions, which, in
turn, fueled his decision to write publicly about the situation. Yet, what
is interesting is that the emotional color of his narrative changed never-
theless as a result of the interventions of the other Facebook users who
had unexpected, but comforting reactions. While the interviewee is not
naming the emotions he felt after others contacted him and tried to help,
the tone of the narrative suggests an unmistakable shift. This highlights
the fact that even with emotions which are temporary, limited to certain
settings and people, or which seem less clearly regulated by wider social
expectations, validation and support from others are still of paramount
importance. Feeling understood, having the legitimacy of one’s emotion
reinforced is what changed the tone of the narrative. The user’s mention
   Social Networking and Emotions    153

that it was people within the NGO sector or working with the sector who
reached out to him points out precisely this dimension of legitimacy.
While on the surface this confirmation of legitimacy may seem to aug-
ment the initial emotion, if anything, the paradoxical result is that it
diminishes it. One way of explaining this is, structurally, that it reassures
the subject that he has the wider social legitimacy on his side, which may
increase his status enough to overturn the interaction, or to be unaffected
by its course. Thus, I argue it is this infusion of legitimacy which is one
of the main reasons why sharing feels good, and receiving supportive
feedback feels even better.
Having said this, not all sharing of emotional aspects is linked to
momentary emotions. In order to illustrate this idea, I have chosen a frag-
ment which reveals a distinct facet of sharing as compared to the one
above:

SB15: I hate all trends, like planking, Harlem shake, I think they are cool
when they are a bit obscure, but when everyone does it, it’s awful. But there
was one I liked: everyone was changing their profile picture to a cartoon of
their childhood.
INT: Oh, I remember that one.
SB15: Well, that one really hit (gestures to the heart). Maybe I am a
grown up child, I don’t know, but I thought that was really cute. So I
changed my profile picture to Kenny from South Park, which is kind of my
childhood. I picked this picture because it was a cartoon, but Kenny was
also a bit twisted and I like having this twisted persona, and being interest-
ing and making things that are different. I have to admit it. So I picked
Kenny because he was a childhood character, but not quite.

Through his choice of a cartoon character, this man expresses publicly

parts of what he considers to be his self, and especially his emotional self
(Farnsworth and Sewell 2012). In this case, the thrill of not being under-
stood is central, as is the presence of a generalized other. His words about
being twisted and making things that are different imply a dimension of
normativity and the emotions derived from not always obeying it. The
enjoyable, implicit, yet almost proud lack of conformity to social expec-
tations as a defining characteristic of the self lies in what the interviewee
154  G.-I. Ivana

is communicating. The desirability of unicity and authenticity, which is

included in most socially accepted discourses about the self (Sennett
1992; Vannini and Franzese 2008), overrides in this case the wish to be
evaluated positively by another. Yet, even this rebellion is mild, as the user
gets the satisfaction of uniqueness not by being offensive, or disruptive,
but only twisted and difficult to understand. Thus, the projection of the
dialogue with the generalized other is similar to shame and pride, but the
imagined outcome is the other being confused, rather than appalled (as
with shame) or admiring (as with pride). Another definite emotion pres-
ent in this quotation is melancholy, and if this wider emotional self-­
disclosure is quite rare on Facebook, melancholy is common.

Memories, Nostalgia, and Reminiscing

The relation of memories and the digital environment is a topic which
has received great scholarly interest (Foot et al. 2005; Hess 2007; Garde-­
Hansen et al. 2009; Pentzold 2009). Most such works discuss memory in
relation with hegemonic discourses and common cultural patterns. As a
result of engaging with macro-social themes like the production of collec-
tive memories, one aspect that gets easily understated is emotion. An
exception is Lohmeier and Pentzold’s (2014) recent study on what they
call “mediated memory work”, which consists of practices of remember-
ing; these practices are always space-bound. At the same time, they argue
for “the cardinal role that the corporeal and dispositional embodiment of
memories plays in mnemonic techniques and in recalling motor
sequences, tastes and emotions” (Lohmeier and Pentzold 2014, p. 779).
The other characteristics of mediated memory work are, according to the
same authors, the connection to the sense of self and individuality, the
embeddedness in culture and normativity, and the archival accessibility
which is enabled by the media. While these are all aspects which appear
in the stories of Facebook users, the focus in the current section will be
on the emotional aspects of mediated memory work.
One emotion which is intertwined with memory and which is often
cited by Facebook users is melancholy. As Radden (2000) points out, the
terms “melancholia” and “melancholy” have been used in a wide variety
   Social Networking and Emotions    155

of contexts, in writings starting from ancient Greek philosophers to

today’s psychologists. The significance of the concepts ranges from sor-
row, to fear or idleness, from momentary to recurrent states, and from
“normality” to pathology. Current works typically link melancholia with
clinical conditions (mostly depression) and melancholy with a situational
experience of sadness or grief; melancholy can transform itself in melan-
cholia, but it does not necessarily have to go in that direction. Having
said this, the use of melancholy in interviewees’ narratives seems to high-
light the affective component of memory sharing, namely, the current
emotional involvement with past events and with how they touched the
subject when they were lived first hand (e.g. present melancholy over past
joy, over naïve romantic enthusiasm, or simply melancholy over lost
lightness of heart). From this point of view, in order to capture this form
of reminiscing, which does not have the element of despair or the depth
of sorrow often associated with melancholy in scholarly analyses, a fitting
concept is that of nostalgia (Boym 2001; Holdsworth 2011; Pickering
and Keightley 2006). Schiermer and Carlsen (2016) distinguish between
three types of nostalgia: restorative (which has a clear end point and sees
itself more as conservativism or traditionalism), reflected (where the sub-
ject is aware of her nostalgia), or ironic (mimicking the restorative one).
The quotation above, where an interviewee was talking about the trend of
posting a cartoon character as a profile picture, is an example of reflected
nostalgia. In a similar vein, when asked about why she posted informa-
tion about a documentary, one user says the following:

And oh, the documentary, because well it is more personal, I mean it’s the
melancholy of old times when I used to study klezmer and now somebody
made a documentary about klezmer that will be launched in a week and I
want to watch it. (SB1)

In their theorization of mediated memory work, Lohmeier and

Pentzold (2014) revealed the importance of the sense of individuality and
the self, upon which this fragment touches. The subject remembers a
particular stage of her life, her formative years of study, which were con-
nected to klezmer music. She feels this aspect is part of her construction
as a subject and it is for this reason that her memory has an emotional
156  G.-I. Ivana

charge of which she is fully aware. Furthermore, it is important to observe

that, like the user talking about childhood cartoons, this person is also
nostalgic about a period of time, rather than about specific occurrences.
While that period is undoubtedly associated with particular events, which
are space-bound and which have an unequivocal temporal unfolding, the
events are deeply meaningful for the total they constitute, rather than
separately. Whether or not this nostalgia is based on idealizations
(Jameson 1991; Higonnet 1998; Kincaid 1992), it remains relevant for
Facebook users both in their own constructions of significance, and in
their posting behavior.
At the same time, by posting on Facebook contents related to one’s
nostalgia, the events about which one had reminisced and the nostalgia
itself are likely to gain a particular status in that user’s online presence.
This is facilitated by Facebook displaying to users themselves their own
posts from several years before under the title “Share a memory”. To be
sure, the klezmer documentary and Kenny will come back to gently
haunt these respondents’ News Feeds bring back old posts together with
the emotions in which the initial posts had originated. The “time line”
type of organization of one’s past activity, with the chronological recon-
stitution of life events, serves the same infusion of nostalgia.
While the sense of self and one’s own past are a fundamental part of
nostalgia, another thread which must not be overlooked refers to social
bonds. This is particularly emphasized by one informant who recalls the
time when she first started using Facebook. She states:

Almost all my Facebook photos at the start were of my friends, me with my

friends and my dancing. I dance flamenco so I had photos of me dancing
flamenco (…) it was only for me like having a memory of the things I did.
One of the most important things when I started using Facebook was hav-
ing contact with my friends and writing to each other and leaving like
messages. And I think that even nowadays that is still the most important
things I have on Facebook. (SB5)

This person makes it very clear that her posting of a memory of some-
thing she did is very strongly linked to her relation with others. She wants
to share that memory with her friends. Moreover, her friends were
   Social Networking and Emotions    157

included in the pictures and, implicitly, in the memory. Thus, it can be

argued that from this perspective posting a picture where one appears
with one’s friends is a form of sharing the nostalgia over the time when
the picture was taken. This is an emphasis on the interconnectedness
which constituted the bond, which means it is also a ground for main-
taining or developing the strength of the bond.

Tastes, Identity, and Belonging

Another emotional aspect which intersects the narratives about past
experiences with others (usually close bonds), and nostalgia over those
moments of togetherness, is belonging. For instance, when asked about
what he choose as a cover photo and why he chose that, an interviewee
described an image of him together with six friends, in a train station, all
laughing and jumping up. He also mentions he is not likely to change it
any time soon, and that it means very much to him, because they were
childhood friends and who now live apart. They still met on a regular
basis, but only in groups of three or four. So, this was their most recent
picture together on a very rare encounter to which everyone was present.
They were in a train station as they were traveling to different destina-
tions and somehow managed to synchronize their trips so that they met
for a relatively brief time. He explains the moment when they all jump
and laugh (which is captured in the photo) as very lively, joyful, and spe-
cial. As May (2017, p. 401) points out in her paper on nostalgia, “past
sources of belonging can endure in a virtual sense through the act of
nurturing the connection in memories and can be used to ‘warm up’ and
give vitality to the present”. The sharing of nostalgia which is encouraged
by bringing up a memory of togetherness is, thus, at the same time a way
of reinventing weakening ties, as well as the emotional re-living of the
interconnectedness which lies at the foundation of the bond. This inter-
connectedness, the moments lived with others, and the experiences which
cannot be broken down to aggregations of individual subjectivities are
what gets sedimented into strong bonds. As these first-hand experiences
are temporary, what are left after they finish are the bond and the settled
emotion of belonging, which is what the interviewee feels. Furthermore,
158  G.-I. Ivana

the size of the group is important. Larger rather than dyadic groups func-
tion as a social microcosm. Drawing on insights from Simmel (2009), the
affect theory of social exchange (Lawler 2001; Lawler et al. 2008, 2009)
explains that triads generate more cohesion than dyads. The opposite
claim has also been made by several scholars (Emerson 1972; Homans
1950, 1961; Molm 1994). Having said this, through their empirical
work Yoon et al. (2013) convincingly show there is typically a structural
dynamic, the cohesion is stronger, the roles are diversified, the internal
norms are reinforced, and sanctions are available as a result of a higher
number of members within a group.
What at group level represents social cohesion is reflected at the level
of social actors in belonging, and Facebook users also confirm the
Simmelian hypotheses. Namely, like in the example above, belonging, or
in other words, emotional commitment derived from an insider status, is
present predominantly in narratives about larger groups. This is not to
say dyadic bonds are not as strong, but it is to say that dyads are typically
framed differently than through membership; consequently, other emo-
tions are more prominent than belonging. Yet, the question remains,
what is the link between the emotions originating in group membership
and Facebook? The interviewee talking about his childhood friends uses
Facebook both as a way of expressing his feelings of belonging and as a
way of reaffirming them. As the insider status is the structural (network
structural, not macro-structural) basis for belonging, preserving and
asserting that status becomes a great emotional stake. Additionally, as this
particular group has changed when its members grew up and moved out
of town, the threat to this user’s insider status increased not because of an
internal mechanism excluding him, but because the group itself has lost
its cohesion. Thus, the recent moment of togetherness becomes a resource
for maintaining unity and sharing it on Facebook is both fueled by and
fueling of feelings of belonging.
Besides the network-based belonging this Facebook user refers to, it is
no coincidence that most works on belonging focus on identity; macro-­
structural attributes of race, religion, and so on; and the relation of social
actors with wider communities more than on dyads (Yuval-Davis 2006,
2007; Innes et al. 2013; Yngvesson 2010). If the person above mentioned
belonging to his group with specific members, others talk about the
   Social Networking and Emotions    159

experience of belonging based on given characteristics or tastes. One

interviewee puts it in the following words:

I think this is the coolest thing about Facebook. To have this kind of con-
nection with someone who was your friend and might still be your friend
if you were to meet in other circumstances, but some reasons it’s not. It
makes me feel like we’re still sharing a bond. For example, I have an anec-
dote: you know Reddit? I browse Reddit a lot. I met one friend in Erasmus,
he was also a Reddit-er and sometimes I post articles and stuff that I find
on Reddit and people ask me where I find that stuff, except for those who
browse Reddit and who know it. And this friend of mine commented on
something that he noticed I posted from Reddit and he said: “Hey, man, I
know we don’t talk that much, but I noticed that you post plenty of stuff
from Reddit and I’m glad we share this.” We never really talked, but it was
cool to have this connection. In the space of reconnecting with people with
whom you were close before I think Facebook makes me feel really good.
(SB15)

This fragment is interesting because on the one hand it appears to

touch upon belonging through the lens of old personal bonds, but on the
other hand it highlights the potential for the development of belonging
through a sort of bondless imagined community (Anderson 1983). This
person talks about his posts and about the positive feedback he received
for them firstly in terms of “connecting with someone who was your
friend”. However, the example he uses to illustrate this idea is centered on
a very weak bond. The other is someone whom he met several years before
and with whom he confesses he never really talks, yet their connection is
based on belonging to a community of “Reddit-ers”. In this case, I read
this particular other as the incarnation of a general relevant other with
whom my informant is not personally bonded, but is nonetheless con-
nected. In this case, belonging neighbors pride, as it also involves the
satisfaction driven by the positive appraisal of another (be it in an imag-
ined dialogue, or, as here, in an actual one). However, if pride often also
involves a hierarchy where the evaluator may have a higher status and
may represent social normativity, the emotional reward one gets from
belonging to the same community as another is more horizontal. This
Facebooker and his “friend” are in the same position. The hierarchical
160  G.-I. Ivana

element only appears in relation to the outsiders, those who are not on
Reddit and thus cannot trace the origin of the articles he posts.
The other aspect which is important to point out is the construction of
an identity. Burke and Stets (2009) and Stets and Carter (2012) explain
in a systematic manner the relation between identity and emotion. They
write: “In the control systems approach of identity theory, when an iden-
tity is activated in a situation, a feedback loop is established (Burke and
Stets 2009). This loop has six components: (1) the identity standard (the
meanings of an identity), (2) output (behavior), (3) input (how people
think others see them in a situation [i.e., reflected appraisals]), (4) a com-
parator (which compares the input with the identity standard), (5) emo-
tion (that results from the comparison process), and (6) situation
meanings (which vary in the degree of correspondence with identity stan-
dard meanings).” Going back to the example of the interviewee who fol-
lows Reddit, his narrative starts with the output, namely, the action of
posting contents from Reddit to Facebook. This is followed by an input,
which is not only assumed by the subject, as someone openly speaks their
mind about it, and reveals the source of his posts. Moreover, the other
already attached the appraisal to the identity of “being a Reddit-er”. The
interviewee compared this tag against his identity standard, that is, the
way in which he generally sees himself, and was comfortable with the
comparison. Hence, the emotion of belonging set in.
It must be said, while Reddit may be read as a virtual community,
where people actually share contents with each other and communicate
directly, belonging to communities of taste, loving the same genre of
music, and going to the same events as others are topics users touch upon
in various ways. Some talk about their own posts made in an effort to
belong; others mention the pleasant feeling they get when unexpectedly
seeing someone else post things they also enjoy.

Anger
Another emotion which is often present in people’s stories about their
Facebook activities and about the significance of these activities is anger.
When asked about online practices they dislike and about negative
   Social Networking and Emotions    161

emotions either brought on by Facebook exchanges or expressed in this

environment, most respondents discussed anger or, its milder version,
annoyance. The examples interviewees used typically described their own
anger over various comments, debates, or independent posts made by
others. One frequent topic for anger referred to intolerance towards
diversity, denial of human rights, and conservative political stances. One
user affirms she finds all types of frustrations annoying, from political to
sexual, and from jokes made in poor taste, to open racism and homopho-
bia. Debates over feminist causes, migration, and far-right movements
are also often described as the online contexts which anger users.
Regarding these statements, I believe a helpful tool for analysis comes
from Collins (1990) who distinguishes between different types of anger,
one of which is righteous anger, also taken up by Gamson (1992), Collins
(2004), Flam (2005) and Kemper (2011). “Another especially
Durkheimian form of short term emotion is righteous anger. This is the
emotional outburst shared by a group (…) against persons who violate its
sacred symbols. It is group anger against a heretic or scapegoat” (Collins
1990, p. 44). Despite my interviewees talking about their solitary experi-
ences of Facebooking behind a computer screen, I argue righteous anger,
the emotional outburst shared by a group, is what they have been report-
ing. By sustaining a progressive discourse, which is likely predominant in
their own circles (since most were aged less than 40 and had a higher
education background), they were putting themselves “on the right side”
of the debate. In other words, the social legitimacy of their own opinion
was stronger than of the opposing one, which placed them in a position
to experience righteous anger. Furthermore, with respect to questions of
normativity and emotional management, it is important to keep in mind
negative emotions are not always socially accepted. Thus, when asked
openly about moments when such emotions occur, it is understandable
that users would allow me to know precisely about righteous anger.
Furthermore, it may also be the form of anger they allow themselves to
freely experience, as this is the legitimate anger, the sort that a subject
“ought” to feel. As many of the other emotions discussed in this chapter,
righteous anger also originates in estimating the position of a relevant
general other through role switching, on the basis of well-established
social norms. Thus, whether progressive political views are prevalent or
162  G.-I. Ivana

not in a given context, the subjective construction of legitimacy and the

estimation that one’s anger is indeed shared by many others make topics
like feminism, human rights, or religious freedom great candidates for
igniting righteous anger, even in situations (like these) where the others
who might share that anger and who give it social legitimacy are not
present.
Unlike in the cases above, where users themselves are angered by the
contents to which they are exposed, another interviewee talks about anger
which (1) comes from another subject than herself and (2) is directed
towards a topic without political implications:

Like some friend of mine posted some fun sentence about Real Madrid,
making fun of them because they were losing, a couple of years ago, maybe
less… a year ago. And then there’s this option where other people can see
what you and your friends are talking about in the initial page and a cousin
of mine, who is my age (note: 26 years old), saw this comment and he likes
Real Madrid. He got so angry and he became… I don’t know… he started
swearing against my friend and he knows she is my friend. That was hard,
because I love him so much, he is my cousin, he is my age, I’ve been with
him since forever, playing… And I said “Wow! It’s just football, you know!
Grow up, please!” (SB10)

This fragment has been selected as it sheds light on the other kind of
anger, the one which is read as an overreaction, as having no social legiti-
macy and as being in need of suppression. Interestingly, when anger
became an emotional violation of social expectations rather than a justi-
fied reaction towards unacceptable behavior, the protagonist of the narra-
tive she chose was someone else. Following Collins’ (1990) typology,
what she described is disruptive anger, which is born out of frustration
and powerlessness. In this case, it is given firstly by the informant’s
­cousin’s inability to change the outcome of Real Madrid’s matches and
secondly by his lack of control over someone else’s ironic remarks. The
role of Facebook, here as with righteous anger, is mainly to allow com-
munication, as the same emotional developments can easily be imagined
in a face-to-face context. Yet, what is less common offline is the level of
publicness one’s angry outburst reaches. For righteous anger, publicness
   Social Networking and Emotions    163

is an additional incentive for expression, as one takes comfort in the

assumption that as more people witness a debate, more will share that
anger. With disruptive anger, the subject’s structural position, which
denies him the power to influence the undesirable situation, may be
enough for his own anger, but it is not enough to socially legitimize it.
Consequently, when such outbursts become public on Facebook, they
will be interpreted as breaking feeling rules. The fact that SB10 says her
cousin should grow up highlights precisely that she finds his expression
of anger lacking the control of maturity or, in other words, lacking full
socialization within the frame of emotional management. His emotions
are not in line with social norms with which he is familiar, and which he
is capable of following, according to his age. This is the respondent’s view,
and it is one which greatly reflects the societal sanctions which derive
from expressing disruptive anger on Facebook. Most other emotions
deemed too negative/dark/aggressive or too intimate for sharing on
Facebook fall into the same mechanism.
Lastly, another important part of anger on Facebook is captured by an
interviewee who confesses he gets annoyed when people share one-­
sentence quotations in an attempt to appear profound and insightful. At
the same time, he says that despite being irritated and thinking they are
stupid, he also takes joy in knowing he would never do that. On a similar
note, in the subchapter about overviewing the activity of weak ties, sev-
eral other interviewees were quoted saying they sometimes keep people in
their circles of friends despite not having any bond with them. They were
very critical of what those people posted, but enjoyed following it anyway
and laughing at it. This is an interesting emotion and, unlike the ones
above, it is specific to Facebook. As the environment allows seeing with-
out being seen, a form of emotional exteriority becomes intertwined in
the experience. So, if, for instance, the user who is annoyed by those post-
ing quotations met them and they started giving him advice by using
those quotations, it is expected his annoyance (if not anger) would
increase. But on Facebook this experience of interacting can be avoided
and when that happens, the shared stakes of the interaction also disap-
pear. Thus, instead of negotiating structural positions (e.g. convincing
the other they are not increasing their status in relation to him by the use
of those quotations), the interviewee has the possibility to look at such
164  G.-I. Ivana

actions from the outside. The result is feeling mild anger, but also mild
satisfaction, which comes from the awareness of a higher social status, in
this case based on more/better education.

Romance, Sexuality, and Their Display

Last but not least, users typically make explicit references to emotions in
their narratives about romance. A common issue is the practice of pub-
licly and repeatedly declaring one’s love for their romantic partner. More
precisely, when asked about exposure on Facebook and what too much
exposure meant to them, several interviewees talked about couples who
constantly posted photos together or who had small dialogues on their
walls about how they felt about each other. All of those witnessing such
actions found them unnecessary and inappropriate. A related practice
which less users noticed, but which nevertheless came up in a few cases,
refers to couples who create collective profiles (e.g. Jane and John Smith).
Here, again, the theme of emotional management is central, as is the
importance of the norm about how much emotion one may publicly
express before it becomes uncomfortable for the bystanders. Hence, two
aspects are particularly relevant with respect to this topic: (1) the struc-
tural patterns of norms and expectations and (2) the publicness of
Facebook.
Norms and expectations play a role in all forms of emotion manage-
ment, and they are especially visible with respect to negative emotions,
like outbursts of anger. Yet, with romantic emotions as much as with
anger, but in different ways, social normativity is nuanced and patterned.
Nuanced, because some expressions of love are read as “endearing”,
“cute”, or “lovely”, while others are “obnoxious”, “fake”, and “out of con-
text”. Patterned, because the social sanctions and rewards for displays of
romantic emotions vary significantly according to the structural making
of the subject witnessing them. Thus, with respect to the actual content
of the emotionally charged exchanges, the level of detail and the amount
of posts dedicated to one’s own romantic partnership are what marks the
difference between acceptable and unacceptable. It is acceptable to pres-
ent an overall image of one’s romantic relationship as fulfilling and happy,
   Social Networking and Emotions    165

but it is not acceptable to share photos from the cooking classes the part-
ners take together; and it is even less acceptable to display fights or con-
flicts. As mentioned in the subchapter on shame, sexual displays are also
typically regarded critically. For instance, one user said she considered the
picture of a couple French kissing repulsive. Others were not as categori-
cal, but still spoke of Facebook as an unsuitable context for manifesta-
tions of sexuality. While these trends of interpreting content are quite
common, they are also strongly dependent of the interpreter. Thus, the
patterns originate in the interpreter’s ages, in their social status, and their
education. Whether research with teenagers, for instance, would reveal a
different facet of Facebook displays of romance and sexuality cannot be
answered here. Nevertheless, the mechanisms through which social
norms, bond expectations, and emotions are intertwined with Facebook
activity, decisions to post, and users’ mutual readings of each other remain
as important across contexts.
The publicness of Facebook shifts the accent back on the bonds
between the overviewer and the overviewed. Besides somewhat general
ideas of appropriateness, users insist on the fact that on Facebook one is
seen by many. The different relation the author of a post has with those
in her circle of friends calls for different behaviors and different measur-
ing sticks. As many Facebookers like to point out, the term “friend” does
not always designate one’s friends. In that sense, even profiles which are
not public require one to act as if they were “in public” rather than
“among friends”. In addition to the issue of who has access to a given
content, Facebook posting of overtly emotional contents also poses the
question of publicness in a wide sense. One user described emotion in
general as too personal to share and mentioned that by the simple fact
that it appears on Facebook, even the most emotional message decreases
in intensity and depth, and becomes less credible. Consequently, displays
of romantic love are read with skepticism and dismissed as “a circus”. The
way in which the interpretation of the content is shaped by the very fact
that it is publicly displayed on Facebook reveals the developing normativ-
ity which is specific to this environment and which overlaps with the
other coordinates according to which an action becomes meaningful for
oneself and for those around.
166  G.-I. Ivana

This being said, the relation between emotion and how one expects or
imagines their actions might be interpreted by another (the topic on
which authors like Mead, Goffman, Cooley, Collins insisted) is very
important for the Facebook expressions of romantic bonds. One user
remembers a telling story:

At some point I had my relationship status as ‘Single’ and a friend of mine

told me: ‘Dude, you look desperate if you have single on Facebook.’ I was
like ‘I don’t care, I am not desperate and if someone thinks so, it’s their
problem, not mine.’ Maybe now I wouldn’t fill in that field, so that I
wouldn’t look desperate, but at that point, I didn’t feel the need to change
it. But I changed it when I was going out with this girl and we were at this
point where you’re not serious, but also not single, and I had my single
status. Then I thought, maybe she gets offended if she sees it. She will think
that even though I am hanging out with her, I am still looking for other
people, but I also didn’t want to say ‘in a relationship’ because that might
scare her, and me as well (laughs), so I thought ‘ok, I am just going to hide
it from the public’ and that is what I did. (SB15)

The issue raised by the interviewee’s friend about “looking desperate”

is a very typical illustration of the symbolic interactionist view about
exchanging roles with hypothetical others. The prediction about how
another might relate to this given situation is shaped by the same norma-
tivity of emotional management and, to an even larger extent, emotional
display. There is less socially wrong about being single or feeling lonely
than about openly presenting that on Facebook. Thus, in a certain sense,
feeling rules do not translate perfectly into desirable Facebook activity.
Statuses, dialogues, and pictures posted on the platform originate first
and foremost in rules of emotional display, which may strangely discon-
nect the emotional front one must put up from their actual ability of
emotional management. In this interview fragment this lack of ­connection
between actual emotional management and its display is evident in the
fact that how the user feels or even how he ought to feel about being
single is not mentioned at all. In terms of social theory, Facebook fosters
a sort of reversion towards an early Goffmanian dramaturgy in which a
presented self and a “real self ” can be distinguished.
   Social Networking and Emotions    167

Coming back to the interviewee’s narrative, it was not the concern

about “looking desperate” which made him change his relational status.
Rather, it is being involved in a type of bond where the frame of expecta-
tions did not overlap with the Facebook tags available. He considered
himself neither single nor committed, and a mislabeling was likely to
have emotional consequences (e.g. his partner being disappointed or
bothered, him being scared). In this respect, by being a vehicle for public-
ness, expression, or display, Facebook becomes a deep part of the bond
and influences its emotional making and unfolding.

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 7
The Structural Underpinnings of Online
Bonds

In the previous chapters, I have discussed at length the importance of

analyzing social networking through the lens of existing social bonds.
Posts, feedbacks, and interactions must be understood in the relational
context to which they belong. Following distinctions made by users, I
have emphasized the different logics in which actions of and interactions
with ties of varying strengths unfold. Tie strength and type have been
depicted as crystallizations of previous experiences of togetherness, pro-
jections about the future of that tie, shared memories, and emotional
connections. Having said this, the friendships and romantic partnerships,
the admiration of others, the wish to impress, and the stopping of a weak
(but strengthening) tie in its tracks are all marked by particular patterns.
Tastes, hierarchies of prestige, and indicators of social status make some
ties more likely than others. One’s life trajectory, the relational configura-
tion of the physical space in which she typically moves, the gradual sedi-
mentation of specific sets of values and beliefs she holds, and the variety
of practical constraints of everyday life will shape intentions and projec-
tions about ties. These elements will limit the odds of her getting close to
certain people; they will even limit the odds of her ever meeting certain
people. Thus, this chapter is still dedicated to practices of Facebook users

© The Author(s) 2018 173

G.-I. Ivana, Social Ties in Online Networking, Palgrave Studies in
Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71595-7_7
174  G.-I. Ivana

and to the meanings with which those practices are endowed as a result
of the relational framework in which they were generated. Yet, this time
the accent falls on discussing the patterns of bonds between users, how
these patterns fluctuate, and the role of online exchanges in the
fluctuations.
Discussing the importance of one’s socialization, the hierarchical char-
acter of social differences, and the external limitations to one’s choices
leads us towards theoretical debates about structure and agency.
Combining insights from Bourdieu’s habitus, Giddens’ structuration,
and Archer’s reflexivity, numerous authors have argued, in different ways,
for an understanding of social actors as simultaneously acting according
to particular dispositions and critically engaging with those dispositions
in reflection and decision making (Elder-Vass 2007; Adams 2006; King
2010; Rafieian and Davis 2016). While this mix of structural and agentic
factors is also included in this exploration of social networking practices
and their significance, I argue the analysis should not stop there. Namely,
thinking of structure and agency in relational terms sees the subject fully
immersed in a universe of more or less stable bonds with others. So, her
decisions and intentions, her routine actions, and her evaluations of her
surrounding world will be filtered through her active presence in that
world and her connections to others who inhabit it. Having said this, I
will proceed with the analysis of patterns within Facebook bonds and
situate it in the theoretical conversation about how a relational approach
would help avoid substantialist concepts of both structure and agency.

Homophily and Social Networking

An unequivocal and empirically sound entry point into the discussion of
patterns when it comes to bonds is the concept of homophily, which
captures structural dimensions such as race, gender, religion, and so on,
the subject’s critical relation with those dimensions within herself and
others, and the patterns of similarity in the likelihood of bond formation.
Lazarsfeld and Merton (1954), quoted by McPherson et al. (2001), iden-
tified two kinds of homophily: status and value. Status homophily is
based on socially ascribed qualities, like socio-demographic variables,
   The Structural Underpinnings of Online Bonds    175

while value homophily is based on beliefs, attitudes, and values social

actors hold. Countless sociological studies have illustrated the patterns of
relational closeness are strongly dependent on race, ethnicity, gender, age,
and education. Value homophily has also been explored at length, either
in itself, or in correlation with status commonalities within networks.
Some recent research has even focused particularly on homophily on
Facebook (Barnett and Benefield 2017; Wimmer and Lewis 2010). Yet,
it is important to note these works are part of a factual rather than inter-
pretative frame. From this perspective, since Facebook contacts are mostly
collections of one’s ties from various points in their life, it constitutes a
great resource for revealing levels of resemblance between one’s contacts
on a variety of socioeconomic indicators; in turn these configurations of
users’ social networks can be expected to have an influence on their opin-
ions, beliefs, taste, and so on. Then, Facebook behaviors can be read as
confirming similarities in order to reinforce belonging to a particular eth-
nic group, religious community, political activist movement, and so on.
In other words, homophily helps with the question of who is likely to
become bonded with whom. However, the question of why and how they
become bonded remains open. On the one hand, in a Bourdieusian tradi-
tion, field theorists talk about structural positions which increase the
odds of particular social actors developing a similar habitus, which in
turn offers a good ground for bonding. On the other hand, in a Barry
Wellman/Harrison White line of thought, network theorists answer the
question of how bonding patterns appear through looking at the dynam-
ics of concrete social exchanges, with their fast pace and lack of stability.
It is argued that here lay the mechanisms which make certain people
more likely to become connected than others. Yet, with Singh (2016), I
argue these two standpoints are not mutually exclusive. The main incom-
patibility identified between the two has been Bourdieu’s tendency to
discuss the structure of the social field in terms of objective relations
between positions, rather than as actual relation between social actors. In
this respect, the move proposed by Bottero (2009) and Bottero and
Crossley (2011) to de-formalize Bourdieu’s social relations and think
them within rather than above social exchanges offers some solutions for
bridging field theory with network theory. Having said this, it is impor-
tant to acknowledge that networks of relations function within the frame
176  G.-I. Ivana

of a particular symbolic order (Singh 2016). With these considerations in

mind, I will turn to Facebook and focus the analysis precisely on the
symbolic order which runs through the bonds between users as well as
through their online exchanges. Facebook users talk about how symbolic
order structures their bonds in two main ways. Firstly, they discuss the
others’ resemblance to themselves in positive terms; secondly they discuss
the practices and characteristics of others in relation to their own under-
standings of what is more generally socially desirable, acceptable,
valued.
Thus, going back to homophily and to the mechanisms through
which similar people are more likely to become bonded, they reveal
both a process of interpersonal network formation and a particular sys-
tem of meanings where some common treats are appreciated over oth-
ers. Despite similarity not being very often brought up, I will look into
the few mentions of homophily that did occur in the conversations
with Facebook users. For instance, when asked whether they experi-
ence the problem of conflated audiences when they post, or whether
they divide their contacts into circles, several interviewees said this is
not an issue, because their friends are very similar to them, and even
when their opinions diverge, it is generally not to the point where it
becomes problematic. Other users pointed out that if others were to be
offended or disagree with their posts, it means they were not that close
anyway and their view does not matter. One person said: “Offend
someone? Well, since they are my contacts, it means that I actually
know them and if I know them, to a certain extent we are similar,
therefore nothing that I would post would offend them because if it
would offend them, it would also offend me. So it’s a nonexistent issue
for me” (SB6). Thus, value homophily in these cases is clearly identi-
fied as a unifying factor in users’ networks. Furthermore, dissolving
bonds with people who have proven themselves to be dissimilar is fully
embraced. For some users, the destruction of such bonds is actually
sought after. Political posts in particular have been signaled by a couple
of users as the reasons for severing ties with the authors of those posts.
This is something which not only came up in interviews, but the inter-
viewees also wrote publicly in their profiles about their decision to
unfriend all those with a certain political view. Then, value homophily
   The Structural Underpinnings of Online Bonds    177

goes beyond the formation and maintenance of ties with people who
are fairly similar on several axes. It becomes publicly assumed as a legit-
imate principle of organizing insider and outsider status. Users take
pride in “cleaning up” their circles, in closing up their own gate of
access to the network, and, in doing so, encouraging other insiders to
close theirs.
This being said, interviewees have approached status homophily with
varying degrees of openness, depending on the criteria on which it was
founded. Race and ethnicity are never explicitly mentioned. Age appears
occasionally as a criterion of differentiation, especially in the context of
older people having other Facebooking habits, other uses of images and
emoticons, which is read with mild superior amusement by their younger
counterparts. However, the bonds my informants have with people of
different ages are typically linked to their families or to social contexts in
which they happened to be, rather than their choices of networking.
While dissimilarities between age cohorts exist, they do not lead to par-
ticular shifts within the bond, and they do not appear to create strong
influences over practices (at least not in the direction of young adults, my
category of interest). Instead they are taken for granted and regarded as
marginal, which in itself is telling of how their bonds are organized. The
relation with users younger than 18 years of age does not preoccupy the
informants at all. With respect to gender, several female interviewees
acknowledge the fact that most of the people in their Facebook network
are women and, when asked about whether they have noticed any gen-
dered practices, they affirm they do not have links to enough male pro-
files to tell. This reflects the same objective reality of homophily on gender
criteria, with people of the same gender being more likely to bond.
Facebook is, in this case, a mirror for social configurations, with little
influence on reshaping them. It is interesting to note that, unlike value
homophily which is overtly embraced, status homophily is presented
mostly as a state of facts which the respondents find neither particularly
desirable nor disconcerting in any way. Whether the intentional compo-
nent is weak or it is simply more socially acceptable to say “I happen to
have mostly female friends” than it would be to say “I have a clear prefer-
ence of befriending only one gender” is difficult to establish within this
context.
178  G.-I. Ivana

Consumer Culture
Yet, one area where Facebook users actively engage with the symbolic
order which is interwoven within their bonds is consumer culture. Soon
after its release, Bourdieu’s theory of taste and class distinction (Bourdieu
1984, 1986) has been adapted to network literature (DiMaggio 1982;
Bryson 1996; Peterson and Kern 1996; de Nooy 2003; Crossley 2008;
Puetz 2015). These works discuss the patterns of social networks and
point to the importance of social actors’ taste in general, but specifically
their use of consumer culture, as a central tool in shaping their links with
others. Regarding the meanings of the goods which are consumed,
Featherstone (1991) was arguing, following Saussure and Baudrillard,
that consumption as we know it today is based on commodities becom-
ing meaningful through their position in a self-referential system of signi-
fiers (Featherstone 1991, p. 85).
Going further, one may ask about the actual mechanisms through
which consumption practices are linked to personal networks. How does
consumption practically contribute to bonds? As Puetz (2015) summa-
rizes, the answers are divided into several categories (sociability, implicit
cognition, group identity performance). For the purpose of this argu-
ment, I will collapse those categories even further and distinguish between
two: the interactional and the expositional. The interactional mechanisms
(Lizardo 2006; Vaisey and Lizardo 2010; Collins 2004; Tavory 2010)
view consumption as fostering conversation, providing pretexts for shared
experiences and generating more or less conscious contexts favorable to
bonding. The expositional mechanisms rely on imagined communities
(Anderson 1983; Straw 1991; Peterson and Bennett 2004). In this case,
the performance of an identity is central. People gain membership to
particular groups simply as a result of their tastes, which are enacted in
consumption practices. Puetz (2015) views this latter approach as less
network oriented, as the actual interactions between people are secondary
to the criteria of inclusion. According to this categorization, there is a
type of non-interactional exchanges on Facebook (e.g. vacation pictures,
food consumption, check-ins at particular events) which appear as
entirely expositional. However, I argue they are not. Rather, they are an
   The Structural Underpinnings of Online Bonds    179

unusual hybrid, which, despite not involving interactions, still involves

bonds. In order to fully explain this, I will firstly analyze consumption-­
related posts and then turn towards those with a stronger interactional
component (e.g. writing something controversial or posing a question
linked to the consumption of a particular product). Last but not least, I
will discuss the other aspects of social structure which are not openly
linked with consumption.

 on-interactional Consumption Posts: Goods

N
and Their Symbolic Meaning Within Bonds
When posting publicly, Facebook users often do not engage in any inter-
action, if their posts are not also accompanied by a clearly directed ques-
tion, or by a statement addressed to someone in particular. Many posts
are a picture, an article, a song, or a few lines written by the user and
addressed to everyone who might read them. When these messages con-
tain a clear element of consumption, which inevitably intersects with
social structure, the dynamic and the context are not always suitable for
generating a conversation or encouraging interactions. Such posts are
typically related to the (a) consumption of cultural products displayed
through sharing music, movie trailers, and book ads, (b) food consump-
tion and diet choices, or (c) location-bound consumption through check-­
ins. Some cases are a mixture of all the above, like vacation images. In
these situations, feedback may be given and a minimal interaction may
be established, through “a like” or a brief polite comment complimenting
the author/their choice of food/their taste in music, but a lengthier or
more significant interaction is unlikely to be born from there. In this
respect, the action of publicly posting any of these contents seems purely
fueled by a performative attempt to demonstrate one’s belonging to a
particular group identity. And this is definitely an element of it. However,
understanding these practices with the help of imagined communities
draws attention away from what users have time and time again empha-
sized—namely, the importance of Facebook as a result of the people who
are there, not only as the imagined whole but also because of who they
180  G.-I. Ivana

are separately. The specifics of the connections between their bonds and
their consumption practices (who in particular they wish to impress,
whose tastes guide their own, etc.) are something most users are reluctant
to discuss. However, interviewees do agree they expect certain people in
their circle to appreciate specific posts and many say they do keep that in
mind, even loosely, when choosing what to share, or more so when decid-
ing against sharing something. One of the more open comments made in
the direction of the link between taste, consumption, and social status
came from a user who said:

With the girlfriends that I’ve had, we always watched many movies and I
cannot sit through dubbed movies. For me that is a no go. It’s worse than
with music. I don’t know how you pick on these things, but if you do…
But one thing goes through the other. If I see this, then I won’t be attracted
to her. (…) Also, I know I am a big, big, big music geek and I know I can-
not expect people to be as fascinated about the same things I am fascinated
about. That is unfair. I spend a lot of time with my hobby so I know it’s
unfair. But if someone just listens to what they play at the club and they are
happy with what they are getting through mainstream radios or media,
then I think… I don’t think they are bad people. I just think they are not
people I am interested in. (SB15)

Firstly, this highlights a form of symbolic order, which encapsulates a

hierarchical organization of the social world and in which cultural con-
sumption is an important indicator of one’s status in that system.
Secondly, it also highlights the critical and agentic stance where one
intentionally adopts and displays certain consumption practices, also
being aware of the symbolic weight those practices carry in themselves
and in others. Thirdly, it highlights the ways in which the structural and
agentic aspects become intertwined within social bonds. Outside of the
bonds with others seen through the user’s own eyes rather than from
above, and outside of the potential of particular consumption practices to
communicate certain symbolic messages to others, the entire conversation
about consumption is meaningless. The music taste of the person whose
profile my interviewee was browsing gave him the indicators he needed
in order to establish the desired strength of this bond in the future. Were
it not for the stake of the potential bond, her taste in music would not
   The Structural Underpinnings of Online Bonds    181

matter at all. Also, were it not for his own taste as reference point, her
preferences would be, again, insignificant.
This example is mostly based on the typification of the other in light of
particular information, rather than on constructing an imaginary about
them in their ongoing experience. In the chapter on monitoring espe-
cially, I have argued such typifications are common for weak and/or new
ties. And going further, it can be said with little doubt that consumption-­
related posts are indeed addressed to and of interest for weak ties who will
likely use them in typifications.
Yet, let us go back to the mechanisms through which consumption
practices are linked with creating and maintaining ties. If typifications are
what is aimed or at least what is obtained through consumption displays
in social networking, one may argue public posts focused on consump-
tion are in fact clear cases of solitary identity performance. I claim these
public Facebook posts are not interactional, but they are not expositional
either. The key idea here is that the typifications users make of each other and
have come to expect from each other have a relational logic and often also a
relational end. The user in the example above did not engage in any inter-
action with the person in question on Facebook. Despite the lack of
interaction, his interpretation was constantly linked with his own prefer-
ences and how they match up. This logic is also illustrated in a poignant
phrase by another user: “for example someone sharing like… some music
that I also like. I also get a positive feeling that my taste matches other
people’s” (SB12). At the same time, SB15 was assessing the potential of a
bond and the typification was part of that assessment. The same sort of
mechanism, in reverse, also occurs when someone shares consumption-­
related content. They are aware they will be typified, and view that typi-
fication (accurately I would say) as part of the negotiation of their status
within their network of ties, especially weaker ones.
This being said, it is important to acknowledge that while consumption-­
related information may constitute the basis for typification, and while
users themselves may know that well, that does not mean all consumption-­
related posts are subordinated to this expected meaning-making pathway.
There is a variety of other rationales and contexts behind sharing con-
sumption practices. There are also a variety of public posts where the
consumption itself is collateral to what is being said. Nevertheless, since
182  G.-I. Ivana

the focus of this discussion is on the link between bonds and social struc-
ture, consumption is regarded mainly through the lens of the hierarchical
meaning it indicates. And in certain cases, the statement about social
difference is unmissable in consumption posts, as one interviewee puts it
when asked about check-ins:

I know people who do that. I don’t see a point to it though. For example
saying “I have eaten in this restaurant”, not mentioning whether you liked
it or not… If you say that you like it, I see the reasoning. You are recom-
mending it. But if you’re just checking in that you are in the subway station
X… I can guess that the majority of these people do that to somehow show
off, like “Look, I’m in Paris. You are in K. and I am in Paris. Do you see the
difference? (SB12)

This person discusses precisely the consumption posts which have no

other explanation than the expectation of being typified and the wish to
be typified in a particular way. With respect to this, the interviewee con-
siders the author of the post attempts to translate the hierarchies of value
attributed to different restaurants, or to different cities, to herself and her
own social background. In his view, the practice of check-ins perfectly
illustrates the belief in the principle that we are what we have (or what we
consume). The relation between goods and identity has long been docu-
mented and theorized (McCracken 1988; Featherstone 1991; Lury 1996;
Leiss et  al. 2005; Gabriel 2013). In this vein, consumption has been
regarded as a phenomenon of self-construction and expression, with dif-
ferent degrees of influence from social factors. Yet, besides the incontest-
able worth what we consume has for us personally and besides how much
that is shaped through supra-individual mechanisms, the relational ele-
ment is still very strong. The interviewee does not read a check-in from
Paris as “I’ve always wanted to visit Paris and I am happy to finally do it”,
or as “Paris is a great city”, but as “I am in a better place than you”. The
vertical organization is constantly there at the interpersonal level. Any
expression of the self is not thrown into a void, but into a social world,
and it is envisioned as “landing” on those with whom one has contact.
One imagines appearing cool, fashionable, rich, and classy to their peers
by Facebooking about their presence in Paris. And we must not forget
   The Structural Underpinnings of Online Bonds    183

these peers are not an abstract entity. They are the people that user will
meet at work the following week, the next door neighbors and the old
mates. Thus, beyond self-expression with its originality or conformity to
collective meaning structures, there are ties which make it directly signifi-
cant one way or the other.
At the same time, this fragment, as well as many similar others which
refer to check-ins in particular, but also to other posts where location is
central, points to the importance of spatiality in understanding con-
sumption within the system of meanings in which it is rooted. In this
respect, the analysis of Facebook practices may benefit from insights from
tourism studies. The widely cited works of Urry (1990, 1995) reveal both
the literal and the symbolic dimensions of consuming places. However,
given the increased frequency of trips in the contemporary world, as well
as the growing likelihood of long-term mobility and the geographical
spreading of people’s networks, the symbolic dimension has changed. As
I have pointed out above, the system of meanings with which the goods
that we consume are endowed is intertwined not only with situational
(inter)actions and identities, but also with durable bonds. In this respect,
besides a trip to Paris being meaningful in the context of (a) the signifi-
cance of Paris in relation to other cities and (b) the significance of such
trips for the identity of the traveler, it is meaningful in the context of the
traveler’s bonds. In order for this latter meaning to be fulfilled, the prac-
tice of place consumption must necessarily be related with the practice of
making that consumption visible. This need for consumption visibility is
combined with one’s geographically scattered network of ties and with
the usually limited copresence of other ties at the same bar or the same
hotel as the poster. Then, social networking comes historically as the con-
tinuation of, firstly, practices of place consumption which were physically
accessible to others (e.g. going to a terrace in one’s hometown where they
can be seen by most people they know) and, secondly, face-to-face narra-
tives, sometimes aided by pictures, which describe to others the con-
sumption of a distant space (e.g. telling copresent people about the
restaurant where one went over the weekend). Social networking allows
place consumption to become integrated in the shaping of social relations
even when those relations are quite weak and physically distant.
184  G.-I. Ivana

The meanings of visiting Paris may be associated with a particular eco-

nomic and human capital pointing towards a certain class belonging. The
very familiarity with this widely accepted meaning may be enough for
one to embark on a trip to France. Their socialization into and embrace-
ment of this system of significance may make them genuinely happy to
go, even if nobody else ever knows about it. It may also make them evalu-
ate their own status in a more favorable light. However, status is also
relational, as it refers to one’s own standing with respect to others. Others
are either imagined communities, or even imagined social fields, or vague
multiplications of the generalized other; but first and foremost, they are
the others in one’s life. In this sense, the full social significance of con-
sumption practices can only be seen in its engulfment into bonds. The
improvement of the standing one has in their own network is at stake
when the practice of consumption is accompanied by the practice of con-
sumption sharing.
Interestingly, this is the aspect the majority of users pick when discuss-
ing Facebook non-interactional consumption-related posts. They insist
more on the display of consumption than on the consumption itself. If
we compare the interview excerpt where the interviewee talked about
music consumption, and the excerpt where the informant tells me his
opinion about place consumption, the emphasis is different. In the for-
mer, the actual taste was the main criterion for making sense of the other
and estimating the potential bond. In the latter, the poster’s choice of
going to Paris on vacation is not the main interest. Rather, their choice of
posting about it is more interesting to him. The meaning of the display,
the “showing off” can also be read in structural terms, as an indicator of
where one stands in a Bourdieusian social space.

 nline Privacy: Performing Versus Stating

O
Upper-Class Status
Continuing the discussion on check-ins leads us to a paradoxical point.
The very information which is symbolically valuable and which can
improve one’s social standing and thus unleash bonding potential which
was previously locked is also the one which the user is socially penalized
   The Structural Underpinnings of Online Bonds    185

for sharing. Furthermore, the meaning of posting overrides the meaning

of consumption. It does not matter that you are in Paris. It does not even
matter if I find that impressive in a different context. You posted about it,
which not only annulled its value, but your action of posting has been a
social disservice to you. The topic of boasting is present in most inter-
views, as is the quasi-universally critical attitude towards food sharing
and check-ins.
Yet, before proceeding with the discussion on boasting and the struc-
tural component of Facebooking styles rather than contents, one other
issue must be addressed. It is not accidental that the person judging music
taste was evaluating the taste itself and the person judging restaurant
posts is evaluating the very fact that the user decided to share that infor-
mation. Here, the key is the difference between sharing consumption
exclusively as status indicator and sharing consumption as experience.
SB12 clearly explains he views the idea of sharing the experience of being
in a good restaurant as acceptable. So, a post containing music/food/
books someone likes, ideally accompanied by a statement which high-
lights the experience of consuming that good over the structural implica-
tions embedded in the meaning of that good, is preferred. Of course, as
discussed in the previous chapters, the actual sharing of experience at a
distance requires an imaginary about the absent other, which is typically
built with the help of online information combined with information
obtained through other channels. Thus, if the bond is weak enough, vivid
details will be missing and, very likely, so will the incentive of recon-
structing the experience of the other. In this sense, the “shared experi-
ence” will be equivalent to the experience of reading about an empty
check-in. However, it will constitute a different discursive frame. The
author of the post would not really share her experience, but she would
signal to the others her social adeptness in displaying status in a relatively
subtle way. From here, it follows consumption of music, movies, books,
which is the consumption of experience per excellence, would be deemed
more acceptable or more “postable” than the consumption of material
goods (unless framed carefully).
In contrast to the experiential frame, boasting represents the unapolo-
getic and unrestrained declaration about one’s own social status. ­Check-­ins
are good examples of such transparent claims of privileged lifestyles, as
186  G.-I. Ivana

they lack any other justifying umbrella, but they are not the only types of
contents readable as unequivocal status affirming. The negative interpre-
tation of boasting is something about which I also openly asked Facebook
users. My interest was on how this attitude was generated and what is it
exactly that makes a post displaying one’s own capital(s) intolerable. I was
assured it was not primarily the lack of credibility of the author, nor the
fact that the content itself was not a meaningful indicator of status. It was
simply the violation of a social norm, something “you don’t do”. But
familiarity with that norm is also a strong indicator of social status, per-
haps even stronger than the actual content which is shared, since it is less
affected by intentional control. In their study about the survival of the
ideal type of the English gentleman, Miles and Savage (2012) point out
“modesty about one’s achievements and a studied vagueness about one’s
social position and class identity” (Miles and Savage 2012, p.  595) as
some of the defining characteristics of the English upper class which have
persisted over time and are still active today. While their argument is
focused on a narrow cultural setting, the view about modesty as virtue is
one that is generally accepted beyond cultural boundaries, and one that
is very compatible with the narratives Facebook users have presented to
me. The gentlemanly ethic of unstated superiority and the ability to dif-
ferentiate from others without having to do so overtly—these are the
markers of social status which come across from refraining from posting
content about oneself. The other aspect Miles and Savage (2012) discuss
and which is very helpful for understanding the mechanisms of social
stratification in social networking practices is the culture of insider recog-
nition. For instance, with respect to this, one user talks about the ele-
ments he notices when looking on an image on Facebook:

SB13: But if someone adds me and I already know that person, but not as
much as I would like, I just take a quick look. For example, I look for the
places. I don’t know why I do that, but I take a look at the places.
INT: The places where the pictures are taken?
SB13: Yeah, the place… because people have some interesting pictures
from places around the world.
INT: So what makes a good place and what makes a bad place?
SB13: A good place to me… I don’t know; it’s complicated. It’s also
related to the quality of the picture.
   The Structural Underpinnings of Online Bonds    187

INT: So the quality of the picture is also important?

SB13: To me, yes. I really love that people spend time to upload pictures
on their Facebook. To me, sometimes it’s like when I see a good a picture,
I enjoy it even if it’s taken here in X, in front of the building that we are in
or it is taken in the other part of the world, but the originality, to be cre-
ative, this sort of thing (…). (SB13)

This person describes the understated indicators of social class, the

cues that make the other an insider or an outsider to the interviewee’s
“caste” from a structural perspective, before the possibility of a stronger
actual bond is even considered. The quality of the image and the original-
ity differentiate the author of the post and give suggestions about status
without blatantly claiming it. What is also interesting is the fact that the
user approaches these issues starting from a conversation about hierar-
chies of place. When asked about how places rank in systems of meaning,
he helps me get a more accurate understanding of how the meanings
around a particular post are constructed, by (1) bringing the focus back
on the person who posted (e.g. how original they are, as opposed to how
impressive the place is) and (2) by linking the declared marker of the
photographer’s social standing (where they traveled) to the tacit ones (like
the quality of the picture). Furthermore, towards the end of the excerpt,
the interviewee renounces the relevance of where the picture was taken
altogether. In other words, irrespective of the openly displayed indicators
of status, it is still the insider recognition based on quality and creativity
which matters. At the same time, even the places where the author of the
post traveled are not the same type of direct display of status as consump-
tion of goods. The trip is, once again, framed more like an experience, so
that it does not contrast the ethics of demure performance of social
refinement.
While this user is particularly eloquent in explaining how social strati-
fication is reflected in practices of posting on Facebook, his view is not
uncommon. Critical and ironical memes have been created and circu-
lated especially for establishing the practices of consumption sharing as
unequivocally undesirable. Phrases like “Did you know you can actually
enter an airport without checking in on Facebook?” and “Facebook, or it
didn’t happen” highlight the value placed on subtle and implicit status
188  G.-I. Ivana

performances as opposed to open displays of wealth, education, courage,

or any other virtue apparently associated with social prestige. In this
respect, Facebooking style and decisions about which practices get shared
from one’s everyday life become definite indicators of social stratification.
The same logic of structure lies behind the preference for posts without a
focus on the poster. Besides the experientially framed posts, another cat-
egory which does not collide with one’s status building is that of posts
which are not in first person. From images of random pets to freshly
released gadgets and from political articles to health advice, none of the
users with whom I have talked had a negative attitude towards it. Of
course, many users were critical of the content of the posts (e.g. the health
advice given on Facebook came from an unreliable source and was writ-
ten with grammar mistakes). However, there was no negative comment
about the decision to post, no questioning of the motives behind it, and
no claim of inappropriateness. These posts can also be understood as
symbolic markers of social structure, but they are not direct statements
about one’s own status. Interestingly, in these cases, the actual practice of
sharing becomes negligible and attention paid to content is restored. In
other words, it is only the explicit breaking of the fundamentally aristo-
cratic norm of public modesty about one’s own achievements which
inverses the relevance between what is being shared and the practice of
sharing.
In the end, this way of making sense of social networking practices in
structural terms encourages impersonal posts; it encourages the circula-
tion of various public online materials; it encourages news or videos
“going viral”. At the same time, it constructs self-referential posting as
inelegant, unsophisticated, lower class, bragging. With this in mind, I
believe the stratified take on practices of sharing announces a tendency
towards a re-privatization and withdrawal of the self from social network-
ing. The relational implications of online re-privatization are important.
On the one hand, first-person narratives go back to the realm of close
bonds, through face-to-face interaction and, at a distance, phone calls
and chatting (note the increase in popularity of apps like WhatsApp over
the last few years). Weak ties get relegated back to the periphery of access
to personal information.
   The Structural Underpinnings of Online Bonds    189

The person above, who was critical towards check-ins from various cit-
ies, metro stations, and restaurants, acts this re-privatized trend through
his own posting practices:

INT: Can you think about the last two or three things you posted on
Facebook? Or maybe your activities, not necessarily posts… maybe you
shared or you commented…
SB12: Yeah, I shared first a link of a movie blog that I liked a lot, sec-
ond… it was also a link to a blog, just one post in the blog which I thought
was funny and the third one, I don’t actually remember. No, I don’t
remember.
INT: Why did you post these things? Why did you feel the need to share
them?
SB12: Hmmmm… good question (laughs). Yes, I thought that it’s the
thing that my friends probably do not know, so I decided to share it.
Sometimes I am also sending links directly in a message. If I know that this
person likes cinema and I for example find a nice article about cinema,
sometimes I post it on their Facebook, sometimes I send it to the friend.
Actually I am not sure about the decision process of how I will share it, but
the main thing behind sharing is to let people know about interesting stuff.

Once more, the sharing practice is linked to the bond he has with oth-
ers. He thinks of his friends when he posts, of their taste and their con-
sumption practices, of the likelihood of them not having read the given
blogs. In this sense, it is important to note only strong ties are relevant;
weak ones do not even cross his mind. At the same time, the open self-­
reference is lacking. One may argue it is implicit, as it is blog content the
interviewee himself read and found interesting enough to tell others
about it. These aspects are telling about the educational capital, the taste
and hobbies, the more general habitus of the user. Nevertheless, the fac-
tual information about his life events, the pictures about what he might
look like nowadays, where he lives and works, whether he often goes to
parties, and so on are missing. And if we think of what was of interest for
weak ties, it was precisely this type of information. The information
which gets revealed is still valuable, but it is limited to what can be shared
with very weak bonds. The principle of the lowest common denominator
is applied. Thus, while they are meant for close ties, posts like sharing
190  G.-I. Ivana

blog articles are regarded as content which one does not mind random
others reading. More importantly, this is content which does not have a
typically lower-class statement about oneself incorporated within. The
action of posting cinema reviews follows the exigency of performing a
particular habitus without explicitly claiming that habitus. This mecha-
nism (which is at its core a handbook case of distinction mechanism)
rekindles early modern privacy rules of those with a high social status
(Sennett 1992) and puts weak ties right back outside of the information-­
sharing circle. An often quoted affirmation made in 2010 by Facebook
founder Mark Zuckerberg was that according to which privacy was no
longer a social norm. While there may have been some truth to that sev-
eral years ago, the relevance of performing privacy for social hierarchies is
catching up with social networking. In the fragment quoted above, the
information shared online had a rather impersonal character. Even so, the
user concludes by saying he would sometimes send the link to the blog to
a friend or two privately, which ultimately underscores the increasing
withdrawal from the public eye.
However, it must be said the tendency towards re-privatization is not
mainly privacy-driven. Rather, the re-appearance of privacy performance
as a marker of social class is primarily a reaction to users’ personal posts
in non-interactional instances. The “knowing of the other” which I ana-
lyzed in the early chapters of this book, the resulting typifications, and
the lack of the shared experience have stripped self-referential posts of
any other social relevance than their status claims. The fact that everyone
expects to be typified according to what they share translates any first-­
person phrase into a possibly deliberate and not very discrete attempt at
establishing a favorable social evaluation for oneself. This is what is then
regarded as an indicator of lower class. So, it is not the actual publication
of particular information about oneself, or the uncontrolled sharing with
too weak bonds, but the fact that Facebook’s design only allows it to be
blatantly shared that matters. As there are very few ways of posting pub-
licly something about oneself without making it a status statement, many
users choose to refrain from the practice altogether. To illustrate, one may
talk about being vegetarian in a face-to-face conversation for a variety of
reasons (e.g. it came up in a conversation about animal rights, it became
obvious when choosing a restaurant to dine with friends, it was a topic
   The Structural Underpinnings of Online Bonds    191

used to fill an awkward silence, etc.); yet, a Facebook post mentioning the
user is a vegetarian will typically be read as a status claim, whether it is
one or not. One informant experienced this himself when he was pub-
licly questioned by his friends about why he posted his decision to stop
eating meat on Facebook. The possibility of the post being an open status
claim and thus marking low-class belonging induces the user’s silence
about themselves. In other words, the constant suspicion about others
setting themselves up for favorable evaluations regarding their success,
power, balance, or happiness largely as a result of public exchanges being
non-interactional by design has led to reluctance in posting about oneself
and to re-privatization.

Social Structure in Online Interaction

Besides the non-interactional exchanges, ranging from consumption dis-
plays and status statements, to individual performances of social ideal
types, interactions are also marked by a similar symbolic order. Regarding
this aspect, popularity is of particular importance, as it reveals something
about the user’s social standing outside of whichever efforts they them-
selves may make to appear in a certain way. In the subchapter about the
uses of the public character of online interaction, I quoted an interview
fragment where the informant explained why she is impressed when posts
have more likes and comments. She reads that as an indicator of the
poster’s popularity. And while she does not mention the role of who those
people are, other respondents also talk about that. The face-giving process
(Ivana 2016) through which someone with a well-established social pres-
tige gives feedback to a user is emblematic in this sense. Then, the actual
performance or claim of status is validated by someone who has the cred-
ibility, authority, or charisma to distinguish.
In interaction, the relational character of power is also apparent in
other ways. Users constantly giving feedback to those of whom they think
highly or who they consider powerful is a common occurrence.
Furthermore, subtle interactional cues, like time taken for responses or
imbalanced conversations where one person writes long messages or very
elaborated formulations and receives back two words, clearly reveal the
192  G.-I. Ivana

structure of power. Unanswered public comments have a similar mean-

ing. In these cases, power is mostly embedded in network relations.
However, these hierarchies within networks often largely, although cer-
tainly not always, overlap with macro-structural categories. In other
words, the person who is popular and powerful enough within an infor-
mal network to not respond to comments, for instance, is very likely to
also have a variety of other capitals and a performance of status, both
on- and offline which makes them socially privileged in relation to others
in the network.
Also arising from the upper-class taboo of promoting one’s own
achievements is the value of tags. Several interviewees have discussed the
fact that it is preferable for the same content to be posted by someone else
rather than by the user herself. This applies particularly to posts about the
user (e.g. pictures from a highbrow event she attended). The fact that
someone else made the information public means that one avoids the risk
of “distasteful” status statement, but still allows the message to reach
those in her network. Additionally, this occurrence is especially conve-
nient because the subject herself does not need to perform status in any
way to get it across. These are occurrences which I call third person status
statements. Alternatively, public discussions about consumption prac-
tices or other status markers function towards similar outcomes. These
interactional status performances also help users out of self-display, as
they imitate acceptable face-to-face conversation.
This approach to social hierarchies and distinctions on Facebook is not
only empirically sound, but also theoretically informed. In his work on
the importance of consumption in the sociology of the past century,
Warde (2002, 2014) discusses three main approaches. One is the macro-­
sociological economism of the 1960s, another is the cultural turn which
started in the 1970s, and the third is the current practical turn. This
approach, which came as a response to the cultural turn, draws on previ-
ous insights, while also highlighting the limitations of an excessive focus
on culture. Namely, the lack of interest in embodiment, performance,
and the overestimation of agentic deliberation have been signaled as
causes for concern. In the loosely related field of tourism, a similar
­performance turn has also been noted (Rakic 2012; Edensor 1998, 2001;
Haldrup and Larsen 2010), as the accent has shifted from meanings to
   The Structural Underpinnings of Online Bonds    193

doings and enactments. My current argument also follows these develop-

ments. By focusing on social status as not only a system of meanings, but
also a set of performative practices, I reveal the ways in which particular
advantages within the social field are not only interpreted, but also actu-
alized and constantly reconstructed in the concrete process of Facebooking.
This is a particularly important point to make, especially in the online
environment, where deliberation does often precede decision making,
and where the lack of copresence makes many traditional forms of social
performance impossible. Yet, even so, online social performances func-
tion in their own right, while at the same time drawing from more gen-
eral social norms. So, it is within these performances, with their practical
and symbolic components, that this chapter has analyzed the interplay
between structure (understood mainly as symbolic order) agency and
network of ties.

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 8
Conclusions

My argument so far has been aimed at understanding the meanings

inculcated in the exchanges of information on Facebook and the ways in
which those meanings are intertwined with relatively stable ties. In order
to achieve this aim, I have established certain understandings for social
interactions, for meaning construction based on experience, for ties, and
for Facebook as a social space generated by its users through the actualiza-
tion of a given set of potentialities. Starting from there, I went on to
discuss the specificities of exchanges of information occurring on
Facebook and the distinction users make between Facebook and real life.
Afterwards, the relation between meaning construction and underlying
ties has been approached from several angles. Firstly, I explored users’
narratives about posting and overviewing, with no reference to instances
of interaction. Within this thematic sphere, the interrelation between the
significance of overviewing and tie strength remained a central focus.
Secondly, building upon the mechanisms observed in non-interactional
contexts, I shifted the emphasis towards the analysis of how meaning
endowment in public social interactions emerges from and is assimilated
to different ties. The importance of publicness in interpretative processes
has also been touched upon. In the last section of that chapter, meaning

© The Author(s) 2018 197

G.-I. Ivana, Social Ties in Online Networking, Palgrave Studies in
Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71595-7_8
198  G.-I. Ivana

construction in private interactions and its variety in respect to tie

strength has been looked into. The significance with which Facebook
contents are endowed in the context of the underlying bonds between
users is shaped by a variety of coordinates. In both non-interactional
overviewing and interactional exchanges, I highlighted the importance of
previous tie strength and relational normativity. Having said this, social
networking actions make sense for the users especially when regarded
through the relations they have with those in their circle. And those rela-
tions involve a major emotional component. Consequently, I have also
dedicated a chapter of the book to the often underestimated emotions
intersecting Facebook use. In this respect, pride and shame, need for sup-
port, belonging, anger, and emotions connected to romance have been
tackled. Last but not least, the links between underlying bonds and
Facebook exchanges also have a macro-structural component. Bearing
this in mind, one chapter is focused on homophily manifests itself in the
network, as well as how negotiations of social status unfold, aided by
particular static indicators and dynamic performances.
This research has been designed to capture the multiplicity, variation,
and color of the relation between meaning constructions in Facebook
exchanges and bonds, rather than proposing a monolithic answer to a
research question. Nevertheless, within this diversity that the fieldwork
has helped me illustrate, there are some threads ensuring the unitary
aspect of the argument. One of them is the focus on the hermeneutic
approach. The entire line of thought that has been followed in the course
of the book was centered on the issue of interpretative processes, more
specifically, how Facebook users construct their understanding of and
emotions around the information shared/exchanged. The actions and
interactions, the unfolding of certain episodes that the interviewees talk
about, the out-of-the-ordinary practices, as well as the routinized habits
have been explored through the lens of the meaning constructions and
the interpretations they have been given by the subjects. At this point it
must be highlighted that throughout this book, meaning has been
regarded as holistic, rather than cognitive. Thus, a Facebook post is mean-
ingful for the user who shares/receives it, not only through reflection
upon it, but also through experience (sometimes with a particular level of
embodiment) and emotions it evokes. In this respect, the distinctions
  Conclusions    199

between interactional and non-interactional exchanges, the analysis of

first-hand experiences of togetherness in “being with the other”, and the
discussion about emotions are examples of instances where the book
focuses on that which is significant without being primarily cognitive. In
the same vein, the focus on bonds, on projections and expectations about
how they may evolve, the relational contextualization of dispersed
Facebook posts contributes to capturing meaning in all its dimensions.
Thus, the other thread that is present throughout the argument is the
focus on the tie framing the interpretation of contents communicated
through Facebook. While the interpretation of the shared information
itself has been briefly touched upon in several instances, the main topic
remained the relation between the significance of social networking
actions and the underlying tie, rather than with the contents themselves.
For instance, when analyzing how one user makes sense of a vacation
picture published by another user, I focused more on the type and
strength of tie between the author of the post and the interpreter, than on
what was in the picture. Furthermore, when discussing what was in the
picture, the emphasis was still relational (e.g. what the user intended to
communicate/what was received/how that relates to various ties, etc.).
The reason for doing so is that, based on the interviews, the tie constantly
appears as a key factor for meaning construction. Who the other is, how
long I have known him/her, how much shared experience we have, how
close to him/her I find myself or wish myself to be—all these aspects are
part of the bond which is conditioned by, but perhaps to a greater extent
conditioning of, the meaning construction around what takes place on
Facebook. Moreover, there has been another thread stemming from the
emphasis on meaning construction, but also from the importance given
to the actual experience of sharing information and interacting on
Facebook. Namely, I am referring to the norms which structure both
what is shared in online networking and how it is read. Regarding this
topic, the insights are multiple, as we can speak of widely accepted social
norms regulating general behavior (like the range of acceptable dressing
styles), a particular informal bond normativity (what friends are expected
to do for each other), interaction normativity (such as when one is obliged
to answer to another), emotional normativity (what is legitimate for one
to feel and when), and structurally differentiated normativity (like what
200  G.-I. Ivana

is acceptable for certain strata of the social structure, but not for others).
All these aspects of normativity have been discussed in relation to
Facebook posts at different points throughout the book.
While these threads give unity to the approach, they also point towards
variety in findings. Different ties favor different mechanisms of meaning
making, just as different interactions are experienced by the subjects
under different flows, depending on both the setting and the tie. They
also have different potentials of contributing to a reshaping of that tie.
Some patterns have indeed been identified and certain mechanisms of
meaning construction emerged as correlated with particular contextual
elements. However, given the limited resources and small scale of my
research, I am reluctant in claiming the elaboration of generalizable pat-
terns for meaning attribution in exchanges on Facebook. What I will say
is that this research describes variation in the mechanisms of meaning
attribution around exchanges occurring on Facebook in relation with dif-
ferent types of underlying ties and with contextual elements in the
exchange (interactional vs. non-interactional, public vs. private). I believe
the discussion about the mechanisms people employ to make sense of
what they experience directly or know of is very revealing for an interpre-
tative social scientist irrespective of whether it leads to generalizations or
not. Yet, many of the mechanisms of meaning construction, as well as
their variation, have been very similarly represented by most of the inter-
viewees. So, one user might read a post from a strong tie very differently
than the same post from a weak tie, but he might read it very similarly to
how another user reads his posts from his/her strong ties. As a conse-
quence, I believe this homogeneity supports the assumption of a level of
generality. More extensive research might investigate whether my depic-
tion of the mechanisms of meaning attribution in relation to different
types of underlying ties is applicable on a different scale.
Before, I mentioned that outside of the question of generalizability, I
view the issue of making sense of one another as a very fruitful object of
study. Coming to the case of the current research, I consider it fruitful
because it sheds light on the exchanges happening under conditions that
by default make the other less accessible than face to face. The current
research is an attempt to get as close as possible to how subjects live their
experience of Facebooking and how they make sense of it, while keeping
  Conclusions    201

in mind that despite being apart when they browse or interact, they carry
their bonds within them. This contributes to a deep understanding of the
practices occurring on Facebook, but it also expands outside of it, into
the study of other interaction/tie contexts.
Leaving aside the specificity of some of the arguments related to
Facebook (such as the existence of a world within reach for one interac-
tant that is inaccessible to the other, the possibilities of monitoring with-
out the other acknowledging it, or the deliberation necessary prior to an
interaction), there are a series of aspects that are lend themselves to analy-
ses of social interactions and ties in general. An example is the fact that
people who are involved in a weaker tie with each other are more likely to
look for indicators by which they typify each other, since they do not
have a consistent enough previous shared experience. If that common
past experience existed, and the tie were stronger, the need for an active
reflection and for typification would fade away. On a different note, the
adaptation of one’s behavior not only to his/her own projections about
the future of the tie but also to the imagined projection the other has
about the tie is also something that occurs in various settings outside of
Facebook. Thus, from this perspective, my research provides insights into
the connection between various ties and meaning constructions in social
interactions, two issues that have often been analyzed separately (e.g.
conversation analysis for interactions and social capital literature for ties),
despite their obvious link.

Directions for Future Research

One of the topics I have touched upon is the temporal anchoring of
meaning construction especially in relation to ties (as emerging from past
shared experiences or from projections about future togetherness).
Regarding temporality, an interesting direction for future research would
be a longitudinal study capturing the fluctuations in ties and their cor-
relation with changes in interactions, as well as the changes in meaning
attributions over time.
Furthermore, not only ties and interactions change constantly, but
social networking does too. Towards the end of the book, one idea
202  G.-I. Ivana

I mentioned is the tendency of re-privatization of the self in social net-

working. It is my firm belief that this tendency is central for the direction
in which the reshaping of social networking is heading. Many of my long
discussions with Facebook users began with their first social networks,
with Hi5, AOL, MySpace and Fotolog. The popularity of these networks
has fluctuated significantly over time. If there is a common element in
how the decline in interest came about, it is the Bourdieusian process
through which they went before being rendered “uncool”. In this respect,
Facebook as a whole does not appear to be following the same pattern.
However, particular practices and some commonly used features of pub-
lic display do. So, a reorientation of Facebook away from the private
sphere, and with it, a reshaping of social networking, is highly likely.
Following the narratives of my interviewees, I regard social networking
as having had three distinct phases. The first one, the precursor to online
networking, were the chatting rooms of the 1990s, which included con-
nection and communication with strangers and anonymity. The second
were the abovementioned pre-Facebook social networking sites, where
the user’s identity was public and connections with strangers continued.
The third, represented predominantly by Facebook, but to certain extent
also by Twitter, was already a step closer to privatization, as users had
control over who can see what they post and it became normalized that
unknown people would be kept out. The fourth stage, which I argue has
begun, is even less open with personal information. The structural expla-
nations for re-privatization are accompanied by other processes. For
instance, the bonds, for which I have argued throughout the book,
become more and more important in establishing what is said and to
whom online. In face-to-face bond normativity, there is a clear difference
between what one shares with a close friend and what they share when
they accidentally meet a schoolmate they previously had not seen in ten
years. The more social networking has become part of our lives, the more
online experience is assimilated with the offline world. What we would
not tell the old mate when we meet them, we will be less and less willing
to have them read on Facebook too. Furthermore, this tendency of mim-
icking the offline favors interactional settings, real-time responses over
static statements and displays.
  Conclusions    203

Bearing in mind these considerations, research into the current and

particularly future shape of online networking is necessary. Facebook,
and social networks in general, have had a tremendous role in rehabilitat-
ing old ties, in negotiating the strength of newer ones, in the ways in
which people keep in touch and in the knowledge they get from each
other’s lives. As social networking is constantly changing, we know little
about the shape and implications of these changes. It is my hope that
these topics will be explored in future research and that this book repre-
sents an encouragement for social scientists to mobilize the resources of
relational sociology in their explorations.
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 Index1

A friendship, 9, 11, 16, 93

Ahmed, S., 21n1, 141 new bonds, 28, 87, 94–100, 103,
Anger, 45, 160–164, 198 106, 108, 181
old bonds/ties/contacts, 7, 28,
87–94, 102, 108, 136, 159,
B 183, 202, 203
Barbalet, J., 100, 141 romantic partnership, 2, 5, 10,
Baym, N. K., 46, 68, 94 11, 16, 33, 63, 79, 83–86, 95,
Belonging, 14, 47, 144, 157–160, 108, 124, 127, 164–167, 173
175, 179, 184, 191, 198 strong/close bond/closeness, 12, 13,
Berger, P., 116, 126 15–17, 19, 45, 56, 74–76, 78,
Bergson, H., 38, 129 80, 81, 83, 85, 86, 88–91, 93,
Body, embodiment, 39, 65, 75, 148, 95, 96, 98, 100, 105, 106, 108,
154, 192, 198 112–127, 133–138, 145, 146,
Bond 156, 157, 175, 189, 200, 201
bond potential, 11, 15, 17–19, weak/distant bond/distance, 3,
96–97, 101, 131, 180–181, 12–19, 53, 55, 74, 75,
184 86–108, 112–114, 116, 117,

1
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© The Author(s) 2018 223

G.-I. Ivana, Social Ties in Online Networking, Palgrave Studies in
Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71595-7
224  Index
Bond (Cont.)
122, 125–127, 135–138, 145,
157, 159, 163, 177, 181,
184–191, 200, 201
Bourdieu, P., 12, 174, 175, 178
boyd, d., 3, 28, 46
C 114, 117, 119, 125
Collins, R., 8, 10, 141, 161, 162,
166, 178
Cooley, C., 10, 104, 142, 143, 166
Copresence, 34, 37, 38, 40, 130,
183, 193
Crossley, N., 175, 178
D 143, 149, 166
Dimmick, J., 38, 133
Disembodiment, 32, 39, 47, 53, 64
E
Elias, N., 1–3
Ellison, N. B., 3, 28, 94, 96
Emotion, 7, 14, 17, 21n1, 47, 54,
55, 77, 78, 99, 100, 107,
141–167, 198, 199
Exchange of information
being with the other/experiencing
the other, 62, 68, 73, 199
knowing of the other, 62, 68, 73,
106, 190
Expectation, 4, 8–10, 14, 15, 17, 27,
40, 54, 62, 69, 74, 78, 82, 90,
105, 115, 116, 141, 144, 148,
152, 153, 162, 164, 165, 167,
182, 199
F
Facebook news feed, 73–74, 91, 102,
107, 156
Facebook Wall, 77, 95, 97, 98, 106,
120, 126, 137, 142, 149, 151,
164
Feedback
comment, 20, 34, 68, 111, 112,
like, 34, 68, 111, 120, 179
share, 111, 117, 135, 144, 153
Flow, 38–40, 64–67, 79, 80, 121,
124, 129, 130, 132, 145, 200
G
Goffman, E., 7, 9, 11, 15, 121, 142,
Group size
dyad, 35, 158
triad, 158
H
Harrigan, N., 11, 12
Hochschild, A. R., 1, 13
Holmes, M., 63
Homophily, 12, 174–177, 198
I
Institutionalization, 84, 116–119,
121, 124–126, 137, 138
Interaction, 5, 8–11, 14–17, 19, 20,
27, 28, 31–40, 45, 46, 48, 53,
54, 56–58, 61–69, 77, 81, 83,
84, 86, 87, 96, 99, 101,
103–105, 111–138, 141, 142,
  Index 
   225

148–150, 152, 153, 163, 173, Norm/normativity, 5, 8, 10, 12–15,

178, 179, 181, 188, 191–193,
197–201
Ivana, G., 13, 14, 35, 149, 191
K Nostalgia, 154–157
Kaun, A., 39, 64
Kemper, T., 147, 150, 152, 161
L 137, 138, 161, 163, 174
Lawler, E., 158
Life course/life trajectory, 7, 27,
89–92, 101, 107, 108, 145,
173
Lived durée/first hand experience, 2,
9, 17, 37, 39, 56, 57, 64–67,
73, 123, 132, 138, 157, 199
Lizardo, O., 178
Luckman, T., 116, 126
Lury, C., 182
M 30–32, 34, 35, 38–40, 46–52,
May, V., 157
McLuhan, M., 29
McPherson, M., 174
Mead, G. H., 104, 142, 143, 166
Mediation, 27, 28, 69
Mediatization, 28, 45, 52, 53, 55, 69
Melancholy, 154, 155
Miles, A., 186
18, 50, 52, 74, 80, 90, 91, 93,
100, 119, 120, 141, 143, 144,
147, 148, 153, 154, 158, 159,
161, 163–166, 186, 188, 190,
193, 198–200, 202
O
Online debate, 118, 119, 128–132,
Overviewing, 73–108, 122, 137,
138, 163, 197, 198
P
Papacharissi, Z., 46, 52
Pentzold, C., 154, 155
Power, 8, 94, 122, 142, 147–150,
152, 163, 191, 192
Pride, 7, 21, 142–152, 154, 159,
177, 198
Public, publicness, 2, 6, 9, 11, 20,
55, 56, 61, 67, 68, 73–86, 88,
90, 92–96, 98, 99, 101,
104–106, 108, 111–117,
119–134, 137, 138, 142, 143,
145, 146, 148–150, 162–167,
181, 188, 190–192, 197, 200,
202
Puetz, K., 178

N R
Non-interactional exchange, 8, 62, Re-privatization, 188, 190, 191,
100, 113, 131, 178, 191, 199 202
226  Index

S Togetherness, 4, 13, 16, 17, 20, 21, 35,

Scheff, T., 141–143 56, 61–69, 78, 90, 129, 132,
Schütz, A., 15–17, 21n1, 29, 32, 33, 138, 157, 158, 173, 199, 201
56, 77, 129 Tufekci, Z., 5, 29
Sennett, R., 47, 154, 190 Turkle, S., 4, 54, 62
Shame, 106, 121, 142–151, 154, Typification, 15, 55, 76, 79, 89, 90,
165, 198 96–100, 102, 107, 108, 122,
Shared experience, 8, 13, 14, 27, 63, 129, 131, 138, 145, 181, 190,
76, 78, 82, 84, 87, 89, 92, 96, 201
97, 99, 103, 107, 112, 118,
122–125, 178, 185, 190, 199,
201 W
Simmel, G., 8, 12, 16, 158 Weber, M., 8, 10, 30
Singh, S., 175, 176 Wellman, B., 3, 175
Social class, 7, 21, 187, 190 White, H., 8–10, 19, 175
Stalking, 5, 20, 97, 103–108, 136 Wolfe, A., 8
Stets, J., 160
Stryker, S., 144
Symbolic order, 176, 178, 180, 191, Y
193 Yuval-Davis, N., 158

T Z
Tie, see Bond Zhao, S., 32